FL Lariat Driver

I feel for you having to watch your truck not move . Of course those of us that have been lurking or participating in this and the FTE forum for the past many months have seen familiar forum member's posts and have, in some cases, vicariously gotten delivery or watched in disbelief at how mucked up things got. I hope this is my last truck EVER but I said that four years ago when I special ordered a loaded 2018 F-150 Lariat. I just have to get the wife to stop shopping RV's!!! The fuel leak is actually at the fuel/water separator drain plug and I probably wouldn't have found it if I hadn't seen the spot on the garage floor while I was down there looking at the brake cable. And the only reason I found the brake cable was because I was checking the tire pressures and just looked over the wheel as I was standing up. The domino theory at work.

I thought about doing that but, they are going to replace the cable under warranty (I'm going to insist on that) and it won't hurt the leaf spring to rub on it for a short time. Since it is only for the parking brake, there is no danger of the braking system losing fluid. The truck hasn't moved since I brought it home 3 days ago and won't be driven again until it goes back into town for the repairs so I'll probably just let them fix it without me putting a band-aid on it.

These are pictures looking over the left rear wheel and looking forward along the driver's side leaf spring. It seems like the cable is too long which is forcing it to bow toward the spring. Another member on a different forum posted his short-bed picture for comparison and his cable wasn't bowing but rather ran pretty much straight back to the wheel. I'm thinking maybe they put a long-bed cable on my short-bed truck. No picture of the fuel leak but it is leaking at the water separator drain plug (big yellow plug on the bottom of the separator). I tried to tighten the drain plug but it won't stay locked and feels loose so maybe the plug is cracked or the o-ring is rolled.

Agree with the steal part and definitely hoping the Service Dept has their wits about them. Truck is going in to get ceramic coated and windows tinted on Monday at a different facility then when I pick it up mid-week it goes back to the dealer for the repairs. Hopefully, I might actually get to use my truck by the end of January! ? Has your truck made it to Washington yet?

The mileage mystery has been solved. In the glove compartment stuck to the window sticker was this little notice. Apparently my truck went for a 14 mile ride around Louisville! And they still delivered it to me with the parking brake cable rubbing on the leaf spring and the water separator drain plug leaking! Total miles on the truck at delivery ended up being 21.8.

It's finally a done deal!! 174 days since placing my order in July 2021 for my F-250 Lariat SCSB with 5th wheel prep, spray-in bedliner, HCTT, UTT and Lariat Value (the only change I made to the order was changed the color from Antimatter to Atlas about a week after I ordered). The stealership agreed to "discount" the price increases which meant they didn't get added into the taxable total and corrected the truck cost for my purposes. Then we arm-wrestled over the trade value until reaching a less-than-desirable number for me. And eventually on Jan 19th I signed the paperwork and took it home. After driving it 15 miles to get to my house and with only 36 miles on the meter, I discovered the rear parking brake cable half rubbed through on the leaf spring and the water separator drain plug leaking diesel fuel on my garage floor. Good times!! Thought I would share a couple of pics. Gotta love that Atlas Blue!!!

It finally arrived!! Showed up at dealer Jan 13th I suspect, they prepped it Jan 14th and called me late on Jan 14. Then we (me and the stealership) had a problem because they wanted to charge me both price increases that occurred since placing my order in July 2021. Thanks to ice-capades documentation, they painfully saw the light and agreed to "discount" the price increases. Then we arm-wrestled over the trade value until reaching a less-than-desirable number for me. And eventually on Jan 19th I signed the paperwork and took it home. 15 miles to get to my house and with only 36 miles on the meter, I discovered the rear parking brake cable half rubbed through on the leaf spring and the water separator drain plug leaking diesel fuel on my garage floor. Good times!! Thought I would share a couple of pics with you. Gotta love that Atlas Blue!!

Those are both great ideas. I did consider a private sale but really didn't want to deal with the tire kickers, those who want it for the price of a wrecked car, or who can't qualify for a loan after I've held the truck for a week waiting on their bank approval. It does chap my a$$ to give the dealer even more profit after I've been jerked around but it also is an easy way out of the truck for me. I also explored the CarMax and Carvana alternatives but surprisingly their appraisals were within $1,700 of the dealer's initial offer and as was mentioned, that difference wasn't enough to cover the extra sales tax I would owe paying full price with no trade. Another thing to consider, at least here in Florida, is the registration and titling costs are higher if there is a new vehicle added rather than just transferring from a trade-in vehicle and that is on top of the extra sales tax.. And after I went silent for two days, my salesman must have been getting worried I was going to bail so he said he "convinced the sales manager to up the trade in offer". I had already told him what I would accept so it made it easy for them to "guess" the right number. I actually didn't expect them to increase their trade number because I figured I didn't really have any leverage but I guess they saw it was my birthday today and felt sorry for me! So I got a big birthday present that will get picked up Tuesday or Wednesday (schedules allowing).

No I'm talking about the actual cash deposit I made with the order. The trade hasn't happened yet. We are still in the negotiation stage on that. In other words - I'm trying to get them to come up from a less than auction number and they are not moving at all. I'm pretty sure they can outlast me on the trade though because I have to close the deal within 7 days of 1/14/22 or they can sell it to the next person in line.

This is the mileage at the dealer before I purchased it.

Mine never said a word about the price increases either, even when they included it in the price. They just put it in there and hoped I wouldn't notice or thought I wouldn't care. Unfortunately, when I ordered 6 months ago the used market was going crazy, so the dealer wasn't even saying the words trade-in value then. They told me it would have to be done when the new truck arrived, which I fully understood but I wasn't crazy about the idea of not knowing the bottom number for all that time. And it gave the dealer that much more leverage against me because when the truck finally arrived, they figured I would have waited however many months and would be much less inclined to bail out. That and the 6 month interest-free loan I had to give them (they called it a deposit). I can't wait for the part where the salesman asks me to give him and the dealership a Five Star review. I'm going to bite my lip to keep from laughing at him.

For those of you following along with my price protection saga, here's an update. Because I ordered in July and the truck wasn't available for delivery until January 14, there had been two Super Duty price increases - one in August and the second in December totaling $1,545. The dealer initially included the increases in the price I was being charged and refused to remove them. After much aggravation and me trying to convince them they were ever so wrong on Friday, I left the dealership before I got to the point of going crazy. Then Saturday morning, emailed them the first of ice-capade's posts. More back-and-forth and by mid-day I had sent them the actual letters provided by ice. By early evening, I finally prevailed and they agreed to remove both price increases. I owe a significant amount of gratitude to @ice-capades for posting the actual Ford letters that supported my position. I initially saved his excellent post from the Retail Price Increase thread that explained the price protection program and his two posts of the actual price increases that stated the price protection and sent all of those to the dealer. Those were met with a luke warm "we'll look into it" response. Then ice came through again and posted the actual letters. I sent those to the dealer and about four hours later, with no more excuses to hide behind, they agreed to remove both price increases. I have yet to see how they "removed" the $1,545 so I don't know if they will try to stick me with the sales tax on it or if they will actually reduce the top line price of the vehicle. Now, we are still arguing about the trade value they propose but that is just a game of chicken at this point. If I didn't have 5 and a half months of wait time invested, I would have walked away in a heartbeat yesterday. I'm fortunate enough to not be in a position where I have to have the truck for work and my current 2018 F-150 Lariat is fully capable of everything I need it to do. The F-250 was intended to give us more RV towing flexibility and allow for a possible 5th wheel RV upgrade in the future. If the dealer and I can finally reach an agreement on a reasonable trade and make a deal next Tuesday, when my salesman gets back from his long weekend, I'll be sure to let you know and I'll definitely post pics! For those of you about to get trucks delivered, have your information guns loaded with the facts and don't let them play stupid. The resources on this forum are awesome!

I did make a note of the mileage when I was there Friday for the first round of negotiations. I actually thought it was already a bit high at 21.5 miles but I think they took it off-site to fill it with fuel so that is probably where the extra mileage comes from. Edit - and it also had to go over to GFX for the bedliner and 5th wheel prep while it was still in KY. But I think GFX is literally right across the road from the plant.

From the many posts in this thread talking about dealers passing on the price increases there may not be many dealers left if Ford were to cut them all off.

Sounds like something I'm going to have to keep in mind when the wife thinks towing the RV up to see the snow will be fun!!