Yesterday our 2011 Four Wheeler Pickup Truck of the Year, the Ford F-150 Raptor SVT left the building and headed back to Ford headquarters. It's been beaten on and abused like a truck of it's caliber should be and it held up extremely well. But there are a couple things wrong with our tester. 

 On a recent trip to Death Valley we accidentally ran the driver-side rocker/step into a large bolder while backing up slowly.  It really wasn't a hard impact. These steps are not designed to be rocker guards, they are only made of what appears to be cast aluminum. So, if you put any of the truck's weight on them, they will crack. Well, when it broke, the piece of the rocker and the large rock hit the body. The factory steps are awesome as steps and as a sort of body flare to keep mud off of the truck. But as a rocker guard, not so much.

When I first got into the truck in August one of the plastic rear shock guards was missing (driver side). The scrape marks in the area looked as though maybe a rock impact had torn it off. The other side was still intact. Since then the Raptor has traveled many hundreds of miles down rocky trails and graded dirt roads at speeds up to 100 mph. The plastic has degraded from the gravel impacts, like someone just wore it away with a sandblaster loaded with small rocks. As a result, the passenger side shock has started to leak oil. We suspect maybe the shock shaft or seal has been damaged by the blasting of gravel.