See below for all the links you’ll need. And thanks for watching! Hope this inspired you to upgrade your Ford Explorer now!!!
Hey everyone today i’m going to show you how to do 10 things to upgrade your ford explorer i’ve got a 2022 ford explorer st here thanks as always for the likes and subscribes and the comments i hope this video helps you out let’s dive into what we’re going to cover today we have black ovals we’re gonna put some red letters on i have racing stripes some rain guards
The hitch cover and headlights we’ll cover reverse lights license frame plates and the rear hvac module and of course how to jack it up all right let’s jump right into the uh the black badging so these ford ovals as they’re called the blue oval or emblem whatever you want to call it the blue and the black doesn’t go too well with this car i just want to swap these
Out and i went to ford’s accessories website found them for a hundred bucks uh didn’t have to go through the dealer or anything like that they look pretty good so and i like that it’s uh oem and that that’ll help me black out this car since it’s already black on black so i’m just going to kind of heat this up and loosen that sticker i used fishing wire to kind of
Pull as i was prying just so i didn’t have to pry too hard and potentially damage the paint um and it worked so that’s all you got to do it just pops right off that’s what it looks like i’m going to use goo gone to get the sticker off that took a little bit of time but it’s a it’s a more mild i didn’t want to use acetone for that so it took some time to get that
Off and then we’re going to use rubbing alcohol and just get all the residue off of there so it’s nice and clean for the new sticker and you can’t go wrong with this it’s made to be slotted a little bit wider on one side so that you can only put it right side up and then we’ll just press it down and polish it up yeah i’m really happy with this it looks really
Good so for the front though it’s more involved we got to jack it up i’ll show you how to do that later got to remove four screws here and there’s a parking sensor this is on each side everything i’m doing is on each side this is the only electrical connector that needs to be removed again on each side but i’ll show you if you need to remove your entire bumper
Um there’s some more wires that are behind here we have to do this anyway so just to get the the bumper cover to come forward but behind here uh every other wire that you would need to disconnect is available to you if you need to remove the whole bumper completely so there’s some screws on the bottom here maybe 10 or so i just took those off and then there’s a
There’s a couple of screws holding the fender to the front bumper cover here this was the most difficult part of the whole job they’re very hard to kind of angle and get into so we’re going to support this again because i’m doing this as a one-man job and put my mechanics chair under there i’ve got a couple of screws up top and then we’re going to be ready to go
So there’s three clips on the left i think there’s three clips on the right there and then we’re going to go back over to that fender slash bumper cover connector and i’m going to pinch that little connector i’ve already removed the two bolts but you still see them here but i had to pinch that with some needle nose pliers to get that to pop off and then i’m just
Going to slide it out just enough that i can get behind there let’s take a look so the back plate the back of the plate has two screws one on the left there and there’s one on the right so all we gotta do is remove those nuts and that’s what they look like we’re going to hang on to those and it slides right out no sticker up front the new one has got those same
Studs we’re going to be screwing onto i mean this is less than five minutes it’s mostly just prep work um you know jacking it up and getting the front bumper cover loosened so that you can access it so really happy with the way this came out i think it looks awesome it’s totally uh murdered out right don’t see that too often all right let’s jump into red letters
I get more comments on this than anything else actually people just noticed this it sticks out these are inserts not decals so they actually have some thickness to them they look really good 20 bucks all right racing stripes so i went again to ford accessories website and i wanted something subtle this is the wife’s car so i didn’t want you know big red or white
Racing stripes that wouldn’t have worked for her so i went to ford accessories and got this i’m going to use i love these mcguire’s clay bars i’m just going to use that real quick just to get the surface totally prepped nice and smooth in case there’s any kind of like bugs or anything that might be stuck to that paint even though it’s a new car it’s totally clean
Still gonna do that all we gotta do is peel off the backer we’re gonna we’re gonna mix a little bit of soap in the spray bottle here we’re going to spray the back of the sticker first and then we’re going to spray the top of the hood this is actually really uh a lot easier than i thought it would be kind of kind of use my hands just to kind of get it in place
And then it comes with a squeegee you squeegee the front first and then you squeegee back and then you just peel this off it’s super easy and it looks really really really good yeah i hope this helps you um it’s subtle but um it’s something right all right rain guards i’m not a big fan of ring guards but i found these low profile ones just fell in love with them
I thought they’d look really slick and i live in cleveland so we often need to kind of crack our windows in the winter time uh to help with condensation and fogging inside the vehicle so first we’re going to kind of test fit them make sure everything’s good and then you got to peel off about two inches of the sticker on each side just to kind of tack it down make
Sure everything’s lined up and then we just you know peel those the back of that sticker off okay press it down and we’re done for the rear same thing let’s get it tested test fit and then yeah piece of cake these look really good happy with that and it’s functional too it serves a functional purpose um here it is in the highway you can see there’s a little bit of
Gap there that gap though i didn’t have any rain come in the car so i don’t like this little logo though so i used i used acetone and a q-tips worth of acetone there to loosen it up and peel it off and now you can see it’s not there and looks really good it looks like it’s oem so for a hitch cover i looked around a lot of different places and i was noticing people
Say that these hitch covers fall off so i got one that kind of stays on there so in case you go through a car wash it’s not going to get lost so i like that it’s ford there’s a link below headlamps so i went to weathertech i got these lamp guards this was the one thing i probably wouldn’t do again but i’ll show you how it works it was just it was a lot of work
I probably if anything would have used a professional uh to do it if i was to do it again again i’m going to use that clay bar get the surface perfectly smooth we’re going to do the fog lights two just get it nice and clean nice and smooth same thing here again we’re going to mix in a little bit of soap and we’re going to spray our hands because it’s so sticky
And it’s clear we’re going to make sure our our hands are also nice and slick so that you don’t get any fingerprints on the back so the way this works is you’re going to kind of start on a side and you’re trying to stretch it as you go around it needs to it needs to sort of stretch out to reach all the way and this took a while i mean i had to sit there doing
That for a long long time to get it to finally stick down and and look right i just don’t think i did as good of a job as a professional would have okay reverse lights so the oem reverse lights are they’re not too bright and i i was noticing on the backup camera i couldn’t see too well so i thought oh let’s just upgrade these to a brighter led reverse light i’m
Actually following the ford instructions there’s going to be a link below for that too this is actually really simple there’s just one bolt that really holds it on right here it’s just getting down to it i got these for like maybe 15 bucks on amazon again there’s a link below i’m going to try these we’ll see if it lasts it’s also got a little bit of a projector
So i think that’ll help too so i’m going to hang on to these oem bulbs because they probably will last a long time so if these ever burn out i can switch back or if i just don’t like them so pretty simple installation is the reverse of the removal and here you can see side by side much much brighter with the led when you’re reversing and here i’m in going into
Reverse from the break with the brake on and you can see it’s still bright okay license plate covers this was uh i tried three different ones started off with the weathertech clear cover which is their best license plate cover it looks really good um but it’s september so i was noticing i was getting condensation and that’s no good so i i switched over and i
Tried the tough bubble shield this was like 10 bucks at the auto parts store also had condensation it looks really good but i don’t have a picture of the condensation there but it just didn’t work out so i found this so the whole whole purpose of a license plate bracket is really to protect it through a car wash because car washes will catch the edge right there
It’ll catch that edge and then bend it so what i’m trying to do with this is it’s going to sit it sits inside of there and then that bracket’s so strong it’s not going to bend and you can see the whole plate no it’s not obscured i love it that looks really great there’s a link below for that too okay when i bought my car the rear hvac was deleted so it’s actually
Kind of hard to find one um i got lucky i found one on ebay there’s the part number this is what the back of it looks like it was about 100 bucks delivered yeah so plug you’ve got your usbs got cup holders but there’s no rear hvac it’s really easy to change it’s five minutes you just pull back the cover there’s a couple of wires just disconnect those and we’re
Going to take this thing inside so there’s there’s the wire that you need for the new control module so it’s all ready to go you don’t need to do anything you just need to have the part so we’re just going to use a torx screw and then yeah i’m just going to plug it in i had to push pretty hard to get that in there but it just snaps right back we turn the
Car on and then you push the power button there and it works everything works and i have heated seats because this is an st so there you go nice and easy all right for jacking up the car ford only gives you four jack points which are the pinch welds on the sides of the car but i need to jack up the whole front end so i found this jackpot it’s nice because it’s
It’s got the slots for when you do need to jack up just one one pinch weld but today we’re going to be putting it on jack stands and that’s the jack point that i found worked for me and then i just rested it down in jack stands so i hope that helps so thanks as always for watching i really appreciate the thumbs ups here’s some nice eye candy for you i just love
This black on black it looks so good with those red letters and the the bottom of the front door and the racing stripes and the black emblem it just came out so well even those rain guards look cool so i hope this helps thanks a lot appreciate it
Transcribed from video
10 DIY Ford Explorer Upgrades By mugs132
