[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" hundred_percent_height="no" hundred_percent_height_scroll="no" hundred_percent_height_center_content="yes" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" enable_mobile="no" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" spacing="" center_content="no" link="" target="_self" min_height="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="left top" background_repeat="no-repeat" hover_type="none" border_size="0" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" animation_type="" animation_direction="left" animation_speed="0.3" animation_offset="" last="no"][fusion_text] Motorsports Safety Solutions; they’re a company very well known for providing first-response services to the racing community. They just celebrated their 21st anniversary serving many off-road organizations; most notably, Best in the Desert. To those unfamiliar, these aren’t people making a living, or even cashing a paycheck, from their time spent at the races. These are people with full time jobs who give their free-time (and often take time off work) to support the racing community with their first-response services. As fate would have it, their trusty Excursion met it’s end after 10 years in service. The racing community pooled its resourced and, through a much more arduous process than you care to read about, MSS became the proud owner of a brand new, 2016 F350 6.7L Diesel, 4x4, Crew Cab, Long Bed Chassis, XL Trim. Before we’d even begun talks with the guys at MSS, KC lights, TR Beadlock, General Truck Body, General Tire, Johnson Emergency Equipment, and Ford all sponsored the build. A conversation with David Nehrbass, point-man at MSS, and we were on board as well. King was eager to step in and provide the shocks; Deaver was in for the leaf springs and we were up for the install, all Carli hard-parts and tuning to make it all jive. We’re honored to be a part of the build to give back to those that have given so much to the racing community. Our conversation with David was a breath a fresh air as he was humbled by this whole experience. First thing’s first, the truck. We’re accustomed to starting with boring, stock trucks. For once, we had the privilege of being the last to the party so it was up to us to bring it all together. The truck showed up looking the part. It didn’t take more than a quick test drive to figure out with what we were working. The truck was overloaded by about 500lbs respective to the door sticker. Driving it at highway speeds, mildly-controlled chaos at best. The service body and cargo engaged both the upper and lower leaf spring overloads. The body roll was overpowering in all turns and any dip or imperfection in the road larger than a couple inches would bounce the rear load off both overload springs long enough confirm the factory shocks were not up to the task of controlling the load or the violent, rhythmic bucking from the overload reengagement. This performance spectrum of which this truck was capable would be unacceptable for the task at hand. Our job was to take it to the next level as its timely arrival could mean the difference between life and death. First, a trip to the scales to see with what we were working; quickly followed by a call to Deaver Suspension. We needed a set of leaf springs that was progressive in design, implemented our custom center pin location, and would handle the max capacity of this F350 through chase roads and the occasional run down the race-course. The truck scaled at 11,740lbs; 5,400 front, 6,340 rear. The guys at Deaver jumped in head first to the seemingly insurmountable task of producing this custom leaf spring in the 2-3 week time frame they were given. The production was handled in a timely fashion and Deaver’s very own, Scott Born hand-delivered the leaf springs to our facility. When comparing the custom leaf springs to our production version of the Leveling Full Progressive Leaf Springs with ¾-ton capacity, they’re over ½” thicker thanks to the heavier gauge spring steel needed to bear the load. L18 – Carli Production Full Springs with ¾-Ton Capacity Custom Springs: Next up, Tear down. We were equipping this with our 2.5” Lift Dominator System as the 3.0” King Shocks would provide a massive control increase for the over-loaded Super Duty. Man shocks require Man-Mounts; the factory coil buckets were replaced with our Dominator Buckets constructed of cold-rolled ¼” plate with full length reinforcements. We modified the upper shock mount to a higher, more outward position when compared to the factory buckets allowing longer, larger diameter shocks to cycle matched-travel to the extended free-length of our front coil springs. Out with the old: Comparative: In with the new: The front end was assembled with everything we make. Carli Coil springs, Carli Spec extended brake lines, Fabricated Radius Arms with Limit Straps, High Mount Steering Stabilizer, Front Differential Guard and 2° Caster Cams. Hell, our reservoir decal even matches the truck’s wrap. With this completed, we moved onto the rear. With the tight deadlines with which we’re working, we only had one shot at the leaf springs. Even when all variables are set in stone, ordering a rear spring usually takes a couple tries to get it exactly where you want it. Luckily for everyone involved, Deaver knocked it out of the park. The truck sat 1/2” taller in the rear than the front with the water-tank full and all gear loaded up; we couldn’t be happier. The progressive springs will provide an extended and MUCH more predictable travel stroke while the monster King-3.0” shocks make short work of keeping the tires planted and the springs in check. Out with the old: In with the new: The result - a perfect stance. Our custom Dominator valving needed an overhaul for the over-loaded 1-ton. A week of running the truck between our local testing hot-laps and the shock bench and the truck drives like one half its size; driver confidence is through the roof and getting into the spring rate no longer means spending 250 feet following an obstacle trying to regain control. We’re excited to hear how David and the crew enjoy the new rig and will continue to post pictures of it in service as MSS sends them! [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Circa late 2010, Sage Carli decided there was a gap in the Ford market that no one but he could fill. The Super Duty checked all the boxes; straight axle, diesel, and most importantly, a large enthusiast market looking for something better. Reluctant as any Ram fanatic would be, he picked up a 2011 Super-Duty XLT equipped with every option he wanted and nothing more: 3.55 Gears, E-Locker rear and a center console. After all, it was destined to live the life of a test mule; no frills required. This was the start of something fantastic. Over the past 6 years and 160,000 miles, the truck has seen more dirt and pavement in the United States (and Mexico) than most people will see in their lifetime. As reluctant as he was to daily drive a Super Duty, the platform won him over and it would take an act of God to pry the truck from his possession after all they’ve been through. Well, all good things must come to an end; 2016 marks the last model year of the C-channel frame, steel bodied, Super-Duty specific cab running the now refined, 6-year-old 6.7L Scorpion V8 Turbo Diesel that we’ve all come to know and love. Given the truck’s potential to become Ford’s “Holy Grail”, Dan (Carli’s Sales Manager) purchased a 2016 F250 so the long-term testing is far from over in the 11-16 platform. Lucky for us, the end of something great could mean something better is cresting the horizon. Our order was placed and the wait began. Enter the 2017 Super Duty in all its boxed frame, F150 aluminum-cabbed glory. September 16th couldn’t come quick enough. We ordered the truck in the same XLT package hoping to begin the story exactly as we had the 2011. The test drive didn’t reveal much as we picked her up on a Friday afternoon; seat time would begin the following week. Initial impressions, the truck was large inside (especially the back seat), FAST, quiet, comfortable and… well… stock. Toss on a camper shell and it was ready for Grandpa to take the kids to the park. We were heading in a different direction. We put in some seat time the following week to find the truck to be comfortable around town on small obstacles, anything over the size of a decent crack in the pavement kicked the unloaded rear end to epic proportions, no different than the last platform. The steering was tighter with a slight wander to the front end. Overall, there was a ton of room for improvement. Word is, this platform was only around 300 pounds lighter than its predecessor. At first glance, the extremities of the revamped undercarriage looked very much the same with subtle differences. It appeared they’d welded the old coil buckets to the frame, increased some bolt sizes and kept pretty much all geometry the same short of a few exceptions to be discussed later. That said, the weight was transferred from the body panels to the frame resulting in a lower center of gravity and better handling which becomes very apparent when you’re fortunate, or opportunistic, enough to jump behind the wheel of both. First things first, we had to see where she sat, alignment-wise, in stock form. For the first time in a long while, we’re impressed with the result. Ford FINALLY realized 1° of positive caster will not cut it on this platform. This caster reading reflects the truck’s handling; the front end is tight and responsive. There's still a touch of wander in stock form but we'll see if that's just the front end wearing itself in or a byproduct of the "adaptive" steering with which most of these trucks are now equipped. Onto the frame, the new, boxed chassis means the factory coil buckets cannot be easily removed. In the 05-16 models, you could air-chisel your way to greatness. In a matter of a few hours, you’d be bolting on one of our Coilover, Coilover Bypass, Dominator or Unchained Systems while remaining easily returnable to stock. Well, Ford took a page out of Ram’s playbook and welded everything to the frame. This doesn’t mean the aforementioned kits won’t be available, they’ll just require a bit more commitment to install and it’ll be a while longer in R&D. We don’t anticipate the weld-on Coilover conversions and Dominator Kits to be available until late 2017. If we’re going to provide you a kit of that caliber, we’re going to take our time to ensure it’s perfect. I digress, we tossed in our 2.5” lift Coil Springs, 2° Caster Shims, Progressive Add-A-Packs and a Commuter Shock Package (Fox 2.0” IFP) and found the track bar design had changed; the ball joint was now installed in the track bar (lifting the pivot point) opposed to being pressed into the axle which should result in better geometry for lifted application. Secondly, the brake lines were changed. We made the necessary call to our brake line manufacturer and got that in the works while we worked on the rest. The good news, the coil springs worked and shocks cycled perfectly. Even better, we installed our Progressive Add-A-Pack onto the factory leaf springs without the factory block to find the rear sat 3/4” taller than the front. Our Add-A-Pack will now eliminate the need for the 3” factory block and run with a rear bump stop drop to strike off the axle. No block means reduced axle-wrap and wheel hop; that’s a win for everyone. We’re REALLY beginning to like this platform! Once the Commuter valving was dialed in, we jumped to the Backcountry (Fox 2.0 Remote Reservoir). A slight valving change from the 05-16 and new lower shock bushing in the rear and we were running beautifully. At this point, we swapped in the Full Progressive Leaf Springs to ensure a nice balance in valving between the two rear spring options for the remote-reservoir shock equipped systems. The 2011-16 springs sat perfect. The only annoyance was a slightly larger bolt from the previous year that will now require the fuel tank to be dropped/manipulated to install the springs. We ended up cutting it down and inserting it the other way as we knew we’d be swapping springs again in the near future. It was then time for the Radius Arms; we crossed our fingers and bolted them up. Our 2005-16 arms went in without a hitch! At this point, it was time to test 37” tire fitment. The 37x13.5 (14.4” actual width) tires and 18x9” American Force Wheels were swapped over from Dan’s truck to see how they’d fit, even with their non-ideal 4.5” backspacing. The results were as expected, looked amazing and netted us a bit of rub we refused to trim given we still had no extended track bar installed and were going up to a 4.5” lift sooner than later. We decided it was 37” tires or nothing with how good they looked on the truck and called the guys over at TR Beadlock Wheels. Larry was happy to be a part of the build and sent us some 20x9.5” TR Simulated Beadlocks in a 5” Backspacing with raw centers and black rings. We ordered some 37x13.5” Toyo R/T to pair with the wheels. Onto the Pintop, we tossed in the shocks and found a valving that worked great on both the Progressive Add-A-Pack and Full Progressive Spring Pack. The only design difference in the shocks, aside from valving, is the larger, 14mm lower shock bolt in the rear up from 12mm in previous years. New misalignment spacers and bushing for other shock packages are in the works!

It was late May, 2013 and we'd just busted our asses moving to our new shop (now old shop) in Corona, CA. Given our efforts, Sage wanted to treat the crew to a weekend down south of the border. It actually couldn’t have worked out any better; a well-needed break for the exhausted staff accompanied by a legion of heavy-duty trucks stacked with some parts that still needed a good thrashing to prove their worth in the stable. First up, lined up at the shop where we had to leave promptly at 8am. As is usual at these types of events, one thing leads to another and after fixing an exhaust hanger and changing oil, we were on the road by 9:30am. Got to the border effortlessly, grabbed our Mexican insurance, met up with our customer in Mexico and went to Tech in Ensenada. After tech was Big Burro; this is an awesome little taco place that we’ve been going to for years. We rolled up and the cook was repping a Carli shirt without even knowing we were coming. Always nice to get a warm welcome: We bailed from there and took back roads to get into the hills and get to the fun part. There's a cutoff road that leads through some gnarly terrain to get to the race course over some guy's ranch. Normally you jam through without a second glance but it was a race weekend and he charged us 40 pesos to go through. For that ride, it was a small price to pay. We landed next to his ranch with horses, cows and the race track while we waited for the group to catch up: Once everyone rolled up we took the course down to a small city where we were bombarded by kids looking for stickers from all the racers. We tossed out hand-fulls of Carli and Bilstein Stickers to the kids and we were off again headed south. Passing through wine country at 100mph on isolated roads was a blast but we decided to jump back on the race course with varying terrain from 4 foot whoops to nearly grated roads until we hit a cutoff to a dry lake bed. This was an awesome experience. We lined up all ten trucks side by side in the lake bed and lit it up. We then headed out door to door exceeding 90mph (others going faster than me) over the dry lakebed which was wide open for MILES. After some drifting in the moonlight, we decided to find a spot to camp and BBQ'd some wicked Carne and crashed for the night. We woke up to the BLAZING Mexican sun at 6:30 sharp and it wasn't long before we were messing around in the dry lake bed again; this time, with awesome visibility. We had to cross the mountain range separating the inlands from the coast. We loaded up on local tacos, fueled up at the only Pemex for miles and went in search of the cutoff road. About three miles from the stop, we found the unmarked road on our GPS and jumped on it. No fences, no grating, no guarantee of the road continuing around the corner. Luckily, this led to a military checkpoint at its junction with Highway 1. We headed down on Highway 1 to San Quintin to play around a bit, fueled up again and headed back North to thereabout of mile marker 350 on the race course. Our leader (guy with the GPS) found a chase road signified by a chain link fence in a tiny town so we took it. It was an awesome little road with a small kicker that everyone hit, then it lead us to the race course which we took for just over a mile to get to our spot on the beach. This was our camp site for the remainder of the day. Let’s just say, 15 ft. from the beach and 500 ft. from the racecourse; well, we could’ve done worse! We then dropped the cameras for the night, unloaded our gear, setup tents threw some coals in the BBQ and unloaded our coolers and chairs in our pickup beds to watch the trophy trucks come through. The rest of the night was, well, a bit of a blur…. We woke up to the sound of crashing waves, watched the fisherman launch their boats, loaded up camp and took off for our third day in Baja. After resting for a solid hour we decided to take the race course North to Santo Tomas. First up was some deep silt, ripped through it and jammed up a hill where the race course traversed several ranches before getting back to the beach terrain. Once the race course took a turn back toward the beach, we eased into some whooped sections of hard-pack with cacti everywhere scattered with rocks of all sizes. Timing the terrain was everything and no one with less than 30” of wheel travel would enjoy the next sections of narrow, hard-packed whoops. After 5 miles of straight hell, we faced a nearly vertical hill with a gradually leveling toward the top and an off-camber right hand turn where we would rest at the top. After a couple beers to calm the nerves and a few photo ops, we were prepare for another 20 miles of hell until Santo Tomas. Much to our surprise, the terrain turned predictable and we had a blast once we descended from our rest spot down toward the beaches. The course turned to light-packed clay and we started hauling yet again. Not many photos take through this part as we were too busy driving but the views were spectacular! We ascended the final climb before reaching the cutoff road and the lead group waited after getting the call that one truck lost a brake line and they were repairing it. Once the repair completed, another truck wouldn’t start as a huge hit had grenade the battery box. About 30 minutes later, we were back up and running. This was the end of the dirt driving. We descended into Santo Tomas, had a beer and a couple tacos and headed back North for Ensenada. One last stop at the Burro for our final taste of Mexico and we were off to refuel, air up the tires, re-engage out ABS and make the trek back through the boarder. We went inland about 10 minutes and hit the Ote Mesa boarder check-point to avoid the traffic through TJ. The line was painless; 50 minutes and 2-bags of life-changing, fresh churros later and we were back on American soil. The hardest part of the trip was turning off the “baja” driving style. The cost of R&D: Overall, this was one of the best trips we’ve ever taken. No serious damage to any rig, nobody got hurt, nobody got harassed by the municipal police and no one did anything stupid.