Maybe half of you already know what I’m talking about just from the title. For the other half: Fasten your seat belt, friends. Because if you have never looked closely at the above flushing tips Ford Explorer STyou are about to enter a nominal space between truth and fiction, an area occupied entirely and exclusively by the four chrome-plated fool rings installed on the back of every Explorer ST Ford has built. created since then launched a high-performance variant in 2020.
I was inspired to write this after a visit to local Lowe’s yesterday afternoon, when I spotted a 2020 ish Explorer ST in the parking lot. Somehow, this has to be the first time in my life that I’ve come close enough to an ST to grasp what’s going on with these exhaust tips – and again, I know I’m late on this topic, and the super explorers all had their laughs and moved on. But this got me thinking, and now I’m sharing it with you.
Take a close look at what’s going on here. The ends are polished decorative bits that connect to the degraded exhaust. Here’s another angle to give you a better idea of what’s going on.
And another angle:
Cheat! Lie! A lie that confronts everything exhausting! However, somehow... Not.
We can’t call this a “fake discharge tip”, as we see above some Lamborghini Miuras and the most modern products of VW Group. Unlike those examples, the exhaust actually flows through the intakes installed on the Ford Explorer ST! Only in the most unexpected way possible.
I am struggling to make an analogy here. It’s like having a trash can where the lid is permanently glued and everything comes in and out through a trap door at the bottom. Or a house with a key to the front door that opened a secret gate in the empty wall a few feet away.
I do not know. My brain is completely corrupted by Explorer ST flush tips.
So they’re not “fake”, but they certainly don’t work the way their visuals make you think they will. They don’t “work” either – the car will function exactly the same if you take them off. But again, that’s true of any polished metal trim ring an automaker might attach to the end of an actual exhaust. So sure, here’s a real, working flush trick. Something that just happened to take part in an exciting, completely unexpected prison break.
I thought I would hate it, but I love it. God bless you, sneak discharge tips.
