Last year I got the itch to buy a truck. And of course being the type of guy that I am, a regular old truck wouldn't do. I wanted a Raptor. So I searched, made phone calls, negotiated, test drove and made some more phone calls, but finally I found one. An oxford white 2014 Raptor with just under 41k miles. One problem - it was in Davenport, Iowa - a 3.5 hour trip one way.

I've come to learn and accept the fact that occasionally I'll want something so bad that it consumes me. That was the case with the Raptor. I knew I'd be miserable and waste countless hours on Cars.com searching and searching so I just f*cking did it. 

When it comes to vehicles I can't really leave anything alone, so off I went to browse for parts. I had a few ideas of what I wanted to change so I went for it. 

I started simple because at first I said, "I won't really buy many parts for this." The nasty stock antenna had to go. This slick stubby antenna looks awesome and cleaned up the appearance of the front end.

For some reason Ford decided to throw ugly reflectors on the mirrors. Now, if they were functional turn signals that would be one thing, but no these are just reflectors. I swapped them with a simple black insert I found on Amazon which looks way cleaner

The halogen lights that most vehicles come standard with flat out suck. I picked up a few Diode Dynamics LED bulbs to swap into my truck's reverse lights, license plate, cargo lamp in the third brake light and dome / map lights. Also shout out to The Hoonigans for the oh so appropriate license plate frame. They made a huge difference. I also upgraded the puddle lights underneath the mirrors with a plug and play replacement from Recon lights. 

Next I'll be doing a few performance upgrades to wake the truck up a bit. Stay tuned.