Installing an ARB Twin in the spare tire mount

[bajahaha]

This thread will cover mounting and wiring the compressor. This is intended as a companion to AGS Off Road's installation video, because there's a bunch of stuff he doesn't show or mention, so I'm posting my notes here.

Parts
ARB Twin
18' Expedition Essentials wiring harness, it's not on their site but if you call them they'll make it for you.
AGS Off Road Raptor Air Gate Kit

Tools
MetriPack Pin Removal Tool
Trim panel removal tools

[edited to add link to replacement trim parts]

PART 1: Mounting the compressor
1. Remove spare. Believe it or not, mission-critical step.

2. Remove the retention strap bolt, then remove all the bolts holding the spare mount to the door, but leave it hanging on the door (see #5 for why).

3a. Remove both trim panels. I have never done this before so I was worried about breaking them. I broke one of them. Now I'm not worried about it anymore, but I am ordering a replacement because knowing there's a broken part there will drive me nuts.

3b. When you remove the long piece at the top, avoid breaking it by removing the bottom first. I used a plastic trim pry bar. I broke two of the top clips clean off. Like the Dirty Harry of trim panel destruction.

3c. Managed to not break the other panel. Here are the clip locations for reference. Again, the ones on the long end will pop out without breaking if you're careful.

4. Disconnect the brake light and backup camera harnesses and pop out the weatherproof pass-thru by squeezing the clips on the top, bottom, and sides. Then you can remove the spare tire mount.

5. Inside the spare tire mount. Note 1: these hooked pins will prevent the mount from falling off the truck when you take out all the bolts. Note 2: the Raptor seems to not have the insulating pad present on the other trims, so don't feel bad. If your Raptor has the pad, well, now I feel sad.

6. With the spare tire mount removed, you'll see the quarter panel air vent grilles. Remove both, starting with the top one. The video suggests using a thin tool to depress the three clips along the top edge. I don't have bratwurst fingers, so I could just poke a finger the through the top flaps, hook it on top of the clip and pull down/out fairly easily. No big deal if you damage one of them. There are two, and only one goes back on the truck.

[to be continued...]

 

[bajahaha]

[continued]

7a. The AGS kit contains an insert that allows you to relocate the compressor's intake air as well and pass the required wiring back into the door. The video shows drill locations for non-Raptor installs, the Raptor kit comes with printed instructions updated for the Raptor. Additionally, they were kind enough to spot drill the exact locations. Armed with a 1" step drill, this step was way easier than I expected.

The top (in this picture) position is for the wiring gland, the other two relocate the intake air filters. The non-Raptor gland location is dead-center, and after finishing up today I think it probably would have worked though the accompanying instructions say it won't. Based on visual inspection the jury is out for me. It would have been a slightly cleaner install..

7b. When drilling the intake air bulkhead holes, ignore the 13/16" instruction. You can do 3/4" with room to spare and no jiggly parts. Even if there's variance in part diameters, you can always make the hole bigger if need be.

7c. In my kit, the gland hole did need to be 1".

7d. Finished holes.

7e. Hardware installed. Hard to see but there are rubber washers behind the bulkhead nuts. The gland has an o-ring.

7f. Final assembly. The pin tools were essential to breaking down the MetriPack connectors. Even so, I lost 20 minutes to the purple switch wire when the terminal hung up inside the housing and the wire pulled out. I don't have a MetriPack crimp tool so I had to gently expand the crimped connector with an awl, reinsert the wire, and re-crimp with needlenose pliers. Looked right when it was done, but we'll see how long it lasts.

8. Install the bulkhead panel as the video says. I chose to run the wiring loom up through the center of the door rather than transverse back to the brake/camera connectors then back across the door. Kind of where the dotted line is. Mocking up the compressor mount on the door and looking at how much I'd need, I left about 18" of wire for the compressor connection. Then I tightened up the captive nuts and reinstalled the lower pressure panel per the video.

9. Press-fit tubing installed per video, mostly. The bottom tube was trimmed about 0.75" in length to lay flat. The other tube passed over the top of it and did not need trimming.

[to be continued...]

 

[bajahaha]

[continued]

10. Remount the spare tire carrier, air hose whip, and air chuck mount. The latter stuff, just follow the video. Getting the spare tire carrier back on properly, over the compressor and without crushing/pinching anything, was giving me trouble. After taking it apart and putting it back together a couple of times I was ready to start making relief cuts on the inside of the carrier.

I didn't post a picture since it doesn't really matter, but the compressor mounts cockeyed into the AGS bracket. This is deliberate, and although it triggers my OCD I console myself knowing I won't see it. I'll know it's there, but I'll pick a different battle. Anyway, given they deliberately did that I made the leap of faith that there's no way AGS would ship an ill-fitting setup, so I just stared at it longer.

The solution is to partially tighten the nuts on the stud bolts, and with all the 13MM bolts and socket handy, use one hand to shove the compressor up, and while holding it use your free hand to seat all the other bolts. There's enough play between the compressor bracket and the spare tire mount that if you let gravity take over things won't fit right.

Once everything fit with zero interference and no wires were in jeopardy, I just cranked everything down tight. I chose the 6 o'clock position for the air chuck and routed the air whip through 9 o'clock to minimize dangly crap under the compressor.

Then it was just herniate myself getting the spare back on and verify clearance/fit between the chuck and the wheel.

[end of part 1, the mounting. part 2 (the wiring) coming soonish]

 

[Johnny Rebel]

This is a really nice write up, so thanks for taking the time to do it. I’ve got the AGS kit sitting in my parts pile, but haven’t installed it yet. This will be a huge help!

 

[bajahaha]

PART 2: Wiring the compressor
I totally get it now. The reason the AGS video doesn't show the wiring process is because it is no joke. It's done, and I'm sure others will get it done faster, but I spent most of today doing this.

You're going to remove a lot of trim. Pretty much all of it. HAHAHA. Really. I have to apologize in advance for not getting photos of everything. At some point I got pinwheel eyes and just plowed through stuff without stopping. I'll do my best to describe what's missing.

Some notes that may make what I write later make more sense:

• Directions are oriented from the rear of the vehicle looking into the cargo area, e.g. left-hand is driver's side.
• I decided at the start to keep the EE wiring loom intact instead of chopping it up, and to tie into upfitter switch #6 at the engine bay (yellow/orange) instead of consuming a remote position near the tailgate. I don't know if I'll ever use one, but I thought it wise to keep the option open.
• Wiring would run from the tailgate hinge through the right-hand B pillar trim (5 - see pic below), under the rear cargo floor gap cover (4), and then dive down the edge of the left-hand B pillar trim (6) into the cable tray that runs underneath all the scuff trim up to the left-hand A pillar trim. Then it goes through the firewall plug into the engine bay, past the fusebox to the battery.

1. Start by removing all the cargo bay trim. You have the trim panel tools, right? Follow the numbers below. Some stuff is not pictured but covered in the detail text.

• Remove the cargo floor liner, then the cargo tie-downs (1).
• Remove the cargo floor (2), there are no clips holding it down, it should come out easily.
• Remove the cargo floor scuff trim (3). There are 7 metal clips, you can use a pry tool or your fingers for this one.
• Remove the gap cover (4). 8 metal clips, also release fairly easily. Pull straight up.

2. Remove the right-hand B pillar trim "collar". Go slow, it and its left-hand buddy don't want to come out. Do the left-hand collar when you're done. Or do them in reverse order because nobody tells you how to do stuff, dammit. The straight/thin trim tool was helpful here.

3. Remove the right-hand accessory panel. This is kind of a gimme after the collars being a pain in the ass. There's another one on the left-hand side. The crowbar trim tool made this easy.

4. The lower B pillar trim is one giant unit. You cannot get it out without removing the rear scuff trim. Do both sides.

5. Remove the right-hand B pillar trim. Start by prying out the blue clips with the metal claw-foot tool that came with your high-quality Prime-overnighted trim removal kit. The trim panel has a foot that hooks into the slot marked by the square. This comes out last. Once you've released the blue clips the whole panel comes out easily, but don't yank it violently out. The door open light, accessory power socket, and one of the antennas are clipped into the panel and you'll need to undo them before anything violent happens. Anyway your $100k SUV is now starting to look like junk. At least that's what my wife said.

[to be continued]

 

[bajahaha]

[continued]

6. Go to bed, wake up the next morning to find the left-hand B pillar, door, and A pillar scuff trim all removed. Oh yes: your pretty much useless but hella cool looking grab handle has to come off before you can loosen the trim by the dead pedal to the point where you can shimmy stuff through it. And by stuff, I mean wires.

The left-hand B pillar trim doesn't have those blue clips, it has two-piece white ones that pop apart. Resist the urge to pop the whole thing out, if you break one they come in packs of four for $32.40/ea. My replacements get here Wednesday.

Anyway, you're now ready to start routing the wiring loom. In general, I traced the path of existing wiring matching its profile as closely as possible as a hedge against interference with the trim panels. This paid off in spades, I had to re-route nothing when reinstalling the trim.

The only exception to this was here, where I thought it best to avoid laying the loom on the sub enclosure, and arced over and under two known trim connection points. The following hopefully show this clearly.

7. Traverse the floor gap section and dive down to the left-hand cable tray. I used a few zip ties to hold things loosely while I tucked everything into place. I didn't want anything moving and creating problems later. I was holding the seat belt out of the way in this picture. I didn't disconnect it.

8. Here it comes down into the cable tray and proceeds under the door pillar trim, which I left loosely in place to keep me honest while placing the loom.

9. Okay. By now you might be wondering if the 18' EE loom is gonna make it to the engine bay, it doesn't. Not even close. I kind of started losing my mind when I realized that, but then I remembered reading something on their site about "blah blah in conjunction with the ARB OEM wiring loom blah" and started (a bit late) to really think about how those bulky-ass MetriPack connectors were going to fare under the front scuff trim.

They don't. Too big. You'd have a giant lump right under the shiny Ford Performance nameplate, which I'm sure their brand people would take issue with. So I took a break from the tailgate loom, got the ARB loom, depinned the MetriPack connector and installed it in the engine bay, routing through the firewall plug as described earlier.

They met up here. I finessed enough length on the ARM OEM loom to position the bulky connectors right under the arch of the door pillar trim just forward of what looks like part of the seatbelt crash tensioner. I didn't get a picture of it, but I routed the female connector under all the seatbelt sensor connectors to ensure interference with the trim was impossible.

This is what that section looked like after everything was connected up and tucked away.

10. That's all I have pictures of. Some notes of things I found useful:

• Stop often to reposition the loom as you work from the tailgate to the front. Zip tie judiciously, but leave them just loose enough to move things if you need to. You really don't want to get a perfect fit in one place only to find that you disturbed a section you thought completed.
• Dry-fit the entire wiring loom and continuity test everything. Do it again before you put all the trim back in.
• The cargo floor D-ring bolts should be torqued to 21 lb-ft, per the Ford Service manual.
• Lay all removed trim out in the order it was removed.
• Don't be impatient when reinstalling trim. It's as easy to break it putting it in as it was taking it out.

11. Trim casualty stats:

• 5 metal clips destroyed. $39.60/4pk
• 1 trim button destroyed. $32.40/4pk
• Tailgate trim cover ruined. $38.40
• 1 plastic rivet loose in a body panel never to be found again.

12. Things to tweak later.

• Clearance between the third brake light and the body increased by about 0.125" as a result of the compressor bracket. When you close the tailgate, the brake light assembly flaps a bit. A rubber shim or furniture skid or something to extend the rubber bumpers molded into the brake light riser should fix that. Either that or this is a signal to remove the riser entirely and hide the third light in the spare tire mount...
• The air chuck is a bitch to release under pressure. So I either have to get in the habit of turning it off first, or just get used to launching hoses and such outta the chuck.

That's it. I'll add anything else I remember later.

[the end]

 

[bajahaha]

Copy of the upfitter switch/wiring/ampacity reference card I made.