6 Must Have Upgrades For The Ford Maverick
The Ford Maverick is arguably the best value of any vehicle on the market. The hybrid version is unbelievably fuel efficient, the bed size useful for bed toys and many trades, and the starting price of $23,400 is a tremendous value. Like most modern vehicles, even with a great starting point, there’s always room for improvement.
Recently, we moved out of our 2022 Ford Maverick XL Hybrid and into our brand-new 2023 Atlas Blue Hybrid XL version. With over 20,000 trouble free miles from our previous Maverick, we learned what upgrades are needed to make the truck a better all-around vehicle. In this article, we’ll break down six of the best upgrades we’ve found for the Maverick, all of which are extremely budget friendly.
RC Bed Cover
With a family of four, the inside of the Maverick fills up fast. This is why we always opt for a bed cover on our pickup. For the Maverick, we went back to one of the easiest to install and best value covers on the market, the Rough Country Soft Tri-Fold cover. As of writing this, the cover retails for $229.95 with free shipping. We’ve found the vinyl cover easy to clean and does a good job of keeping your gear out of the elements. We especially like that it’s easy to remove, so we can toss it off in a matter of seconds when we have larger items to haul.
Vision Wheels
Maybe our biggest gripe with the XL version of the Maverick has to do with the cheap looking steel wheels. If they would only paint them black, it would be such an improvement over the silver. We ditched ours in favor of a set of Vision Boost wheels that we found from Discount Tire direct for $125 each. It’s a 17x7 that has 38mm of offset and 5.5 inches of backspacing. This is nearly identical to the factory wheel specs, but the Vision wheel is approximately three pounds lighter than the steel wheels.
Nomad Grapplers
While we could have transferred our stock tires over, we opted to go back with the same tire we upgraded to on our previous Maverick. This is the Nitto Nomad Grappler and it’s an all-terrain tire that actually engineered for Crossovers and lightweight vehicles such as the Maverick. This tire is significantly lighter when compared to a Light Truck tire in the same size. This equates to a better ride and less performance (and MPG) loss. We mainly needed an all-terrain tire for the puncture resistance over gravel terrain we frequent. For $184 each, we got a tire that looks better, rolls quietly, and comes with a 60,000-mile treadwear warranty. It’s also worth noting that we are averaging 40mpg with these tires (hand calculated).
Bed Shock
If you are in and out of your bed frequently, you’ll quickly find that the slamming tailgate grows old in a hurry. Ford even recognized this fault and it’s why they offer a tailgate assist strut that you can purchase separately. The Ford one costs $50, but you can now get one from Rough Country for only $29.95. Both are easy bolt-on upgrades and do the same job. It is worth nothing that you will need to remove the driver-side tailgate tie down for this mod, which may be an issue if you are frequently hauling oversized cargo.
Bed Protection
Our truck did not have the spray-in bed liner, so we opted for two very cost-effective ways to protect it. The first was adding a bed mat from Rough Country. It retails for just under $100. It’s a great way to not only protect the bed but keep gear from sliding around. To protect the tailgate, we picked up this Ford Accessories tailgate liner kit. We used our Ford points that we got when purchasing the truck for this upgrade. It retails for $80. All in, we still save over $300 compared to what we would have spent on a spray in liner. Depending on what you plan on hauling, this is a great solution.
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