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Old 03-16-2019, 12:23 AM   #1
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Question 2020 Ford F350 - XLT or Lariat / options guidance?

2020 Ford F350 - XLT or Lariat / options guidance?

Hi all

First time pickup buyer. We will custom order a 2020 Ford F350 - XLT or Lariat
A Hallmark pop up camper will be in it 99.999 % of the time. Currently learning about what options / packages we want.

Some smart pickup truck owners here I bet.

A few questions to help guide me…

Do I care about Fog Lamps? (does anyone ever use them?)

Do we care about Pedals: * Power Adjustable…?
My wife and I share driving when going camping.
Do the driver memories recall the Power Pedals?

Do we need to be Lariat to get power seats and power seat memories? I can’t figure this out.

I didn’t see heated and cooled seats listed anywhere on Lariat specs…. do we need to go higher to get heated and cooled seats? :-(

Do we want to get the 4.3 Electronic Locking Axle?
I believe it is much better for climbing mountains with the 2,500 lb + truck camper on the back, plus cargo…?

If we move to the midwest (a possibility) … would we want the remote start option, so we can warm up the F350 before getting in it?

How hard is it to wire in external lights, light bars, etc to the Ford optional Outfitter Switches?

with the vehicle (below) configured as we like, Ford offers either LT275/70R x 18E BSW A/T 4X4 tires

or for an extra $290, I could get LT275/70R x 18E OWL A/T tires.
what tires should i get?
I would MUCH rather have the tires come from Ford, from the start, and not have to change them out, and sell the stock tires.

By the way - we always use our cell phones for Navigation (Waze or Google Nav) so we have no use for a built in NAV. Any way to somehow NOT get it, to save $?

* * * * * For what it is worth - this is the type of pickup + options we are looking at: * * *

F-350 - 2020. Custom ordered.
Crew Cab (4 real doors, most space)
6.2L gas
176” Wheelbase (max)
8 foot bed.
4x4
Single Rear Wheel (SRW)
gas.

4.3 Electronic Locking Axle (I believe it is much better for climbing mountains with the 2,500+ truck camper on the back, plus cargo)

FX4 Off Road Package (comes with Skid Plates :* Transfer Case and Fuel Tank)

Snow Plow / Camper Package.

11,400 GVWR package (or whatever is max GVWR)

Rear Window - privacy glass.

Medium Duty Battery (a second battery)

Alternator * Extra Extra Heavy*Duty

LED Roof Marker/Clearance Lamps

Front 40/20/40 Split Bench Seats (not front console) so driver can exit passenger side if need be. (this is important to us with our current narrow driveway)

Inflatable Rear Outboard Safety Belts (Crew Cab®) - for our daughter.

Cruise Control

Power Equipment * Power Door Locks and Windows
Steering Wheel * Audio Controls
Tilt/Telescoping Steering Wheel

48 Gallon Fuel Tank – 176" Wheelbase
Integrated Trailer Brake Controller
Trailer Hitch Receiver – 2.5" Built Ford Tough® Trailer Hitch Receiver (SRW)

Hill descent would be very nice. A part of tow package I believe.

stuff John REALLY wants:

Adaptive Cruise Control (Lariat I think? Unsure)

Platform Running Boards (best if Ford does them. Less hassle, and not “modified” $445 2019.)

SYNC® 3 for Apple Car Play

have been advised to get:
Upfitter Switches $165 in 2019

Thanks!

John
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Old 03-16-2019, 12:47 AM   #2
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If I had the need for an F350, I would be getting the diesel. If you move to the midwest you will need a block heater before you need the remote start. Just check all the option boxes and you will have no problems.
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Old 03-16-2019, 12:49 AM   #3
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I have a 2002 F250 XLT. i'm happy enough with XLT, the additional gadgetry in a Lariat is more stuff to get flakey as it gets older. plus I rather dislike all the digital stuff in new cars (and I'm a recently retired computer engineer).

I use my fog lamps quite a lot driving twisty mountain roads at night, where the high beams are too bright and high. I also use them in both rainy and foggy weather, both on my truck and cars.. I need to get some yellow bulbs for them, I have those on my cars and I find that helps in dense low fog. I wish I had LED projector headlights, my 2002 has halogen parabolic reflector lamps.

My XLT has the power pedals, and they really help my wife, who has very short legs. if she had to move the seat up to reach the pedals, the steering wheel would be in her belly.

my XLT has a power driver seat, and a manual passenger seat, without memory. it has the split bucket/bench where the wide center arm rest folds up for a 3rd seating position, which we've used a couple times.

Since our kids are grown and gone and we rarely have passengers, we opted for the 'supercab' rather than the full crew cab, and htat half back seat space is mostly used for carrying personal goods. the supercab longbed has a shorter wheelbase than the supercrew longbed, so the turning radius is a bit better.

my 2002 F250 longbed 7.3 diesel has a 38 gallon tank, that was standard with a longbed.

mine is a 4x4 w/o the FX4 option.

it has the standard ford running boards, not the retracting ones, I think they came with the Lariat package.

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Old 03-16-2019, 12:54 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Farther View Post
If I had the need for an F350, I would be getting the diesel. If you move to the midwest you will need a block heater before you need the remote start. Just check all the option boxes and you will have no problems.
Thanks for the thoughts. Appreciated.

and... for us.... the gas is much better than the diesel.

Diesel is about $9,000 more, and we'd never do enough mileage to make up that $9,000 (if i am recalling correctly)

Not full time camping / driving.

plus the diesel is about 900 lbs heavier (if i am recalling correctly) and so we then lose 900 lbs of carrying capacity - that hurts us with a 2,500 lb Hallmark Pop Up camper in the back, plus cargo.



J.
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Old 03-16-2019, 12:55 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John in Santa Cruz View Post
I have a 2002 F250 XLT. i'm happy enough with XLT, the additional gadgetry in a Lariat is more stuff to get flakey as it gets older. plus I rather dislike all the digital stuff in new cars (and I'm a recently retired computer engineer).

I use my fog lamps quite a lot driving twisty mountain roads at night, where the high beams are too bright and high. I also use them in both rainy and foggy weather, both on my truck and cars.. I need to get some yellow bulbs for them, I have those on my cars and I find that helps in dense low fog. I wish I had LED projector headlights, my 2002 has halogen parabolic reflector lamps.

My XLT has the power pedals, and they really help my wife, who has very short legs. if she had to move the seat up to reach the pedals, the steering wheel would be in her belly.

my XLT has a power driver seat, and a manual passenger seat, without memory. it has the split bucket/bench where the wide center arm rest folds up for a 3rd seating position, which we've used a couple times.

Since our kids are grown and gone and we rarely have passengers, we opted for the 'supercab' rather than the full crew cab, and htat half back seat space is mostly used for carrying personal goods. the supercab longbed has a shorter wheelbase than the supercrew longbed, so the turning radius is a bit better.

my 2002 F250 longbed 7.3 diesel has a 38 gallon tank, that was standard with a longbed.

mine is a 4x4 w/o the FX4 option.

it has the standard ford running boards, not the retracting ones, I think they came with the Lariat package.

Thanks for all the info John - much appreciated.
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Old 03-16-2019, 01:16 AM   #6
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I think you'll find the gassers get much worse mileage when heavily loaded or towing while the diesels hardly change. I had a new 2001 E150 van with the 5.4 Triton V8 gasser, its mileage went way down when it was fully loaded, and even more towing our simple 2000 lb tent trailer. I don't know anything about the 6.2 gasser, presumably thats mated to the new 10-speed automatic which is supposed to be a superb transmission and they just introduced a 10R140 version for the superduty trucks (the F150 trucks and mustangs have been getting the 10R80 version for several years now).

i wanna put some rancho 7000 shocks on mine, and a fresh set of BFG KO2's in the stock LT265/75R16E ...
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Old 03-16-2019, 08:48 AM   #7
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2020 Ford F350 - XLT or Lariat / options guidance?

A word about navigation. Don’t be so quick to dismiss the factory navigation option. It offers one advantage over your phone: It has built in maps, which means it works without needing to constantly download needed maps from a cellular connection, which your phone relies on.

We didn’t want the built in navi on our 2016 F-150 either, but the only truck that our dealer could locate within 500 miles that met all our other requirements had it, so we just sucked it up. It turned out to be a fantastic tool. We went road tripping at that point for a year, favoring “the road less taken”, which meant that we might go a couple weeks at a time without cellular coverage. But every day that we moved, we used our trucks onboard GPS to plot that day’s goal and get us there. Worked great. Except for the time that it offered us a “shortcut” option over the Cupboard Mountains in Montana. That was a nail biter. And is also the reason that we now carry a chain saw when in Serious Adventure Mode.
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Old 03-16-2019, 09:44 AM   #8
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What does Ford charge for map updates? My buddy's Toyota costs $250 for western Canada and US and another $250 for eastern Canada and US.
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Old 03-16-2019, 09:50 AM   #9
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What does Ford charge for map updates? My buddy's Toyota costs $250 for western Canada and US and another $250 for eastern Canada and US.


I don’t know, but I know a guy who bought an updated map disc for a Mini Cooper from eBay for $50, versus the $600 that Mini wanted for it. It came postmarked from Romania. Possibly not entirely legal but the disc worked perfectly.

For me, I’m not going to worry too much about new maps for a few more years. Don’t find myself needing to navigate to new subdivisions too often.
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Old 03-16-2019, 10:43 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sclifrickson View Post
A word about navigation. Don’t be so quick to dismiss the factory navigation option. It offers one advantage over your phone: It has built in maps, which means it works without needing to constantly download needed maps from a cellular connection, which your phone relies on.

We didn’t want the built in navi on our 2016 F-150 either, but the only truck that our dealer could locate within 500 miles that met all our other requirements had it, so we just sucked it up. It turned out to be a fantastic tool. We went road tripping at that point for a year, favoring “the road less taken”, which meant that we might go a couple weeks at a time without cellular coverage. But every day that we moved, we used our trucks onboard GPS to plot that day’s goal and get us there. Worked great. Except for the time that it offered us a “shortcut” option over the Cupboard Mountains in Montana. That was a nail biter. And is also the reason that we now carry a chain saw when in Serious Adventure Mode.
Good point.... we have been places in the middle of nowhere, and having an old GPS unit was very very handy.

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Old 03-16-2019, 10:45 AM   #11
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I had the in dash navigation in my Tacoma, and while the voice was wonderful, the directions were so so, and, as Glenn pointed out, updating the maps was expensive. They must have paid that lovely voiced woman far too much! I preferred using my Garmin NUVI 3580 with lifetime maps - more accurate & no cost for updating (although a very boring voice - I'm tempted to try some of the other downloadable voices; maybe Mr. "T"?. "YOU WILL TURN HERE!!!")

I sometimes run Waze on my phone, but as Scott mentioned, when you lose cell coverage, it goes away. About the only phone based navigation that includes all the maps on the phone is CoPilot. You can download maps with Google and some of the others for the area you are traveling, but that gets to be a PIA. CoPilot includes all the maps with the app, but is is large.
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Old 03-16-2019, 11:10 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Losangeles View Post
Do we need to be Lariat to get power seats and power seat memories? I can’t figure this out.

I didn’t see heated and cooled seats listed anywhere on Lariat specs…. do we need to go higher to get heated and cooled seats? :-(
...
By the way - we always use our cell phones for Navigation (Waze or Google Nav) so we have no use for a built in NAV. Any way to somehow NOT get it, to save $?
...
11,400 GVWR package (or whatever is max GVWR)
Some of the detail configuration options would be easier to answer with the online Build and Price tool, but I just checked and it is still not available. I assume that John is working with a dealer or using 2019 configuration information for planning.

The minimal information which is available online (in the "Future Vehicles" listing) describes the 10-speed, but there are often configuration inter-relationships so which transmission is available in the desired truck is unknown.
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Old 03-16-2019, 11:18 AM   #13
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Do I care about Fog Lamps? (does anyone ever use them?)
If they are actually fog lamps, they are useless in almost any clear driving condition. If they are aimed too high to be fog lamps, they are just bad driving lights which are dangerous for oncoming traffic. As the driver of a car which is not the height of a monster truck, I find pickup truck lighting to be bad in general, but "fog" lamps mounted up a knee level, aimed up in my eyes, and used in clear conditions, are especially horrible.

Properly aimed fog lights don't put any light far enough ahead to be useful at highway speed; they make sense in conditions which are sufficiently obscured (by fog,snow, or heavy rain) that you are driving significantly more slowly.

I added good fog lights to my first car, but they are rarely much good here - mostly they were somewhat useful for spotting crossing wildlife at low speed on twisty roads in some areas. I have had mediocre factory fogs on two cars, and the only thing they are really good for is to see the lane divider lines better in some highly obscured conditions. I wouldn't pay anything for factory optional fogs, but if they come with some trim level or package chosen for other reasons, okay.
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Old 03-16-2019, 11:24 AM   #14
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Do we care about Pedals: * Power Adjustable…?
My wife and I share driving when going camping.
Do the driver memories recall the Power Pedals?
I assume that any common vehicle with power adjustable pedals available also has a multi-way adjustable driver's seat and tilt-and-telescope steering column. In that case, the usefulness of adjustable pedals depends on all the other stuff. With fixed pedals, some people find in some vehicles that (depending on their height) when they have the seat adjusted for proper pedal reach then either stuff on the dash is too far away, or they are uncomfortable jammed up against the dash and/or wheel.

With two drivers switching adjustable pedals might just be an annoyance if they're not included in the stored settings for each driver. This could probably be checked in the owner's manual, but that's probably not available yet.
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Old 03-16-2019, 11:33 AM   #15
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with the vehicle (below) configured as we like, Ford offers either LT275/70R x 18E BSW A/T 4X4 tires

or for an extra $290, I could get LT275/70R x 18E OWL A/T tires.
what tires should i get?
Maybe I'm missing something, but that looks like the same type and size of tire (LT275/70R18) in the same tread style ("A/T" or "all terrain"), differing only in appearance: BSW = black side wall and OWL = outline white letters.

Quote:
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I would MUCH rather have the tires come from Ford, from the start, and not have to change them out, and sell the stock tires.
I agree that getting the desired tires from the beginning is more convenient. The other approach is to just get the desired tires as the second set, but the first set can take quite a while to wear out on an occasional-use vehicle. I would likely only pay for a tire upgrade as a new vehicle option if it came with different wheels. I wouldn't pay anything for a tire appearance option.
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Old 03-16-2019, 11:38 AM   #16
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The placement of fog lights on many SUVs puts them below the bumper. It took a week from brand new for the lens on my driver side fog lamp to be shattered. No idea what caused the damage. Cost to repair was more than $400 and involved removing the wheel well liner. I had a piece of Lexan cut to the shape and fitted it with adhesive caulk. Not pretty, but it works.

I don't use the fog lamps, but they came with the package so I had no choice.
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Old 03-16-2019, 12:48 PM   #17
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I don't know anything about the 6.2 gasser, presumably thats mated to the new 10-speed automatic which is supposed to be a superb transmission and they just introduced a 10R140 version for the superduty trucks (the F150 trucks and mustangs have been getting the 10R80 version for several years now).
Online articles suggest that the 6.2 (which is the current F-350 gas engine) will be available in the 2020 with either the existing 6-speed or the new 10-speed, but what one can actually buy will depend on the many configuration rules which are not known at this point.
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Old 03-16-2019, 01:32 PM   #18
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re: factory tires, my experience has been that most trucks come with cheaper tires than the ones you'd likely buy. for instance, my Tacoma came with BF Goodrich "Rugged Trail" which /looked/ decent enough but were crappy onroad and offroad compared with the premium BF Goodrich KO2's, and also had much worse tread life.

for those who aren't familiar with these, the KO2's are a superb blend of road and offroad tire, great in everything but deep mud, quiet smooth ride on the highway, and excellent traction on most sorts of dirt roads (again, except deep mud, for which you need a M/T tire).

btw, those KO2's, at least in the LT265/75R16E size for my 2002 superduty, there's two versions, a '3MPS' version which has the '3 mountain peak snowflake' icon which implies somewhat better snow rating than regular M&S tires, and an 'DT' version which has a different harder tread compound, is only rated M+S, but holds up better on gravel and such under the heavy weight of a HD class truck... apparently the 3MPS variants are prone to chunking on gravel with a vehicle that weighs as much 8800 lbs (the GVWR on my F250)
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Old 03-16-2019, 06:19 PM   #19
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You might even look at the new 7.3L gas engine that Ford will have available for the 2020SD. I have not seen the official specs yet, but some have estimated 450 to 500 hp and 500 to 580 lb-ft of torque. Ford has said the 7.3L will have more torque at a lower rpm than 6.2L. I have a 2012 F250SD XL w/ a 6.2L V8 and it has all the power I need and then some.
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Old 03-16-2019, 06:36 PM   #20
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fyi, the LT275/70R18E KO2's also come in 'DT', for heavier trucks.
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