Teenager Builds Single Cab Ford F-150 ‘Raptor,’ Becomes American Hero

Ford is a company that sometimes goes against the grain. It’s the only muscle car builder to still produce V8s, it’s the only one to turn its muscle car into a $315,000+ Porsche GT3 competitor, and it’ll happily sell you a Ford F-150 with a supercharged V8 that makes over 710 horsepower (the Ram TRX is dead).

What it won’t do though is sell you a single-cab version of that F-150. In fact, it won’t even sell you a single-cab variant of the normal F-150 Raptor. If you happen to be a teenager in Patterson, California named Christian, though, none of that matters because you’ll just build it yourself.

Throughout 2024 he’s been working on this project, and his attention to detail is outstanding.

Let’s start at the beginning: This is a rear-wheel drive single-cab F-150 with a 5.0-liter Coyote V8 under the bonnet. The picture above shows what it looked like when Christian first picked it up. From the factory, it makes 400 horsepower and 415 lb-ft of torque. Those are healthy figures, but a little down on power compared to a genuine Raptor which produces 450 horsepower and 510 lb-ft of torque.

Having a rear-wheel drive platform also detracts from its Raptor-ness, but don’t let that get you down. Christian didn’t just throw some Alibaba Express body kit on his pickup and call it a day. Just as an example, in his first video ever on this subject (embedded below), he recommended fabricating a brake line for those interested in this conversion. How many 18-year-olds do you know who recommend fabricating anything on a project car?

Things only get cooler from there. Above you’ll see that he has 37-inch tires on the truck, pretty much from the beginning of the project. His knowledge of the subject is deep; he has a comprehensive understanding of what one needs in order to go from everyday F-150 to Raptor.

He traveled several hours to pick up several of the parts he has now and it’s saved him thousands of dollars. Doing almost all of the work himself has also saved him a pretty penny, and he documents much of the transformation on his own YouTube channel which, as of this writing (and probably never again), has just 440 subscribers.

He’s refreshingly modest about his work; after initially installing the same FOX shocks found in the Raptor, he openly admitted that it drove “dangerously” off-road. Instead of just calling it good, he went back and fixed it. “I changed the angle of the shocks, had them rebuilt, and left them at mid-perch to get the truck riding great,” he tells The Autopian.

Here’s the real kicker, though. Almost anyone with a bit of determination and a touch of skill could replace parts. Christian went further and made sure that this truck had the body of a Raptor too. Well, not the four-door short-bed part; that would negate all of this single-cab goodness.

From the doors forward, this has a genuine Raptor front clip. That includes the fenders, the hood, and the grille, and again, he did all of the installation himself. This wasn’t a bolt-up job either. Some parts, like the fenders, required slight changes to the mounting holes, and the entire front end needed slight tweaking to get every panel to fit just right.

If that’s not tough enough for you, he also picked up a set of Raptor-style rear fenders (three inches wider than stock mind you) and then customized them to fit his truck. That included cutting, sanding, and then forming the final details in bondo. No, he’s not a master body-man this early in life, but his uncle is.

That uncle is the owner of Rapid-O’s Autobody in Patterson, California, a shop that specializes in performance vehicles. Evidently, Christian would turn to his uncle any time he happened upon something he couldn’t accomplish, but he otherwise did this work himself. To my eyes, it came out beautifully. Here’s a look at the paintwork process once the rear fenders were formed and ready for installation.

Oh and don’t forget about the interior of the truck. A Raptor has a slightly unique aesthetic to it, and Christian didn’t want to forego adding it if he could. To that end, this F-150 sports the larger infotainment, digital climate control, and a drive mode selector even though that last bit doesn’t do much at the moment.

There are still a few pieces to go if he wants to push this even further into Raptor territory. He could add the appropriate steering wheel, dash, and even engine at some point. A conversion to 4WD would be the last step in taking this truck all the way. Where did all of this passion come from? “I got into cars originally due to my dad he always had nice cars when i was growing up,” he says. Clearly, he’s taking that torch and running with it.

Here’s one more thing that really won me over about Christian. He’s not considering this some super-holy creation. He won’t even call it a real Raptor, but instead, he puts quotes around that term in most cases. He even responds to haters with calm admission that it’s not a “true Raptor.” That deserves just as much praise if not more than his genius fabrication skills.

For now, he’s spent around $11,000, not including his own labor, on the transformation. That’s quite good. Paxpower, a brand that specializes in this sort of thing used to list its conversion price for normal quad-cab trucks at over $25,000.

This might not be his last build either. He’s currently taking offers on this one and he says “I’m looking into buying crashed single cabs and converting because the market is going crazy for these.” Who knows? Maybe Christian is the kind of fabricator we and others end up featuring for decades.