2009 Ford F150 Buildup - Fantastic Ford

With the Ground Force leaf spring in its new position, Adolfo then aimed his sights on the driveshaft. Ground Force's instructions call for slicing up the shaft bracket. A guide mark was applied to the bracket and everything underneath the line was sliced off.

We stuck with Falken when shopping for tires, and the ZIEX S/TZ04 265/40R22 rubber complement the new rollers perfectly.

With the F-150 successfully lowered, Adolfo transplanted the TPMS sensors from the factory wheels, and replanted them on the 22-inch Falken Executive models.

Our fresh Ford was now sitting low and sporting some style underneath the fenders, but instead of moving straight to swapping in the dB Exhaust system, we made a bee line to Spectre Performance so they could start mocking up an intake prototype, and give us some hard numbers on performance gain.

The Spectre crew quickly began configuring and reconfiguring an array of various pipe lengths...

Now all that was left was to fabricate a cooperative heat shield, and put the pieces together.

A few prototypes and dyno runs later, Team Spectre decided on a combination of straight and curved tubes that would deliver optimum airflow.

Back on its final few dyno pulls, the Ford was recording a noticeable increase in performance at the 40-88 mph range, which reflects real world speeds.

Spectre's prototype intake setup served up a healthy 14 hp and 6 lb-ft of torque over stock equipment.

At this point, our busy schedule conflicted with Spectre's already backed up dyno reservations, so we headed back to JBM Motoring for the final link in our performance puzzle: the dB Exhaust system.

Adolfo used a Sawzall to cut the stock pipe at the muffler exit, and disconnected a few bolts and hangers in order to eliminate the F-150's restrictive exhaust.

The free-flowing dB muffler finally made its appearance, and once installed, will not produce any annoying in-cab interior resonance. It will, however, make our project sound like a truck's truck.

The finishing touch to the dB exhaust system—a 12-inch, polished tip that will let other truck owners know who's really packing heat. Even though we didn’t have a chance to dyno the truck post-exhaust installation, we called dB and they gave us their numbers. Eight hp and 8 lb-ft. of additional torque round up our total power to 22 extra ponies and 14 more pounds of torque. For an audio sample of the dB Exhaust, log on to Truckinweb.com.