In cooler months, the area Ford chose to roast its engineers is used by locals for picnics and an off-road activity called dune surfing. Drivers traverse the sandy slopes at high rates of speed, tempting fate and the distinct possibility of rolling over. Given the general conservative nature of Dubai's ruling clan, the locals have found some interesting ways to cut loose.

The 2011 Explorer I came to ride in was perched upon the ridge of a sand dune. The truck would have looked rather regal were it not for the black duct tape crisscrossing its body panels. Apparently there's not an Arabic equivalent for Brenda Priddy, because only a camel shepherd would have been thrown off by this amateurish camo job. 



Its interior looked equally odd. Sets of guy-wires stretched laterally across the first and second row of seats. Tiny curlicues of wires – temperature sensing thermo couples – branched off the support wire. The sensors fed data into a laptop mounted in the second row. It looked like some Rube Goldberg contraption meant to electrocute ill-behaved passengers. 

Chief engineer on the project, Don Ufford, told Autoblog, "Those sensors measure the temperature of the air at eye level, around your H-point and at the floor. We need to make sure we've got good coverage in each zone. This kind of heat and humidity makes it really tough to hit our targets, and we've had to make some upgrades to our system in order to make sure the system works in this worst case scenario." 

This would certainly be that.



Ufford later noted that most cooling upgrades identified in Dubai would make it into U.S. vehicles, giving Stateside drivers the benefit of extra capacity developed for the Middle East market. This region of the world historically buys about 10,000 Explorers per year, making it one of the USA's most-exported vehicles. But the A/C isn't the only thing the team is checking out here. 

If you've followed the introduction of the 2011 Explorer, Ford is headlining it as an SUV, not a crossover. Of course, they're not saying it's not a crossover, which it is. Ford freely admits that the Explorer is related to the 2010 Ford Taurus. If you ask enough questions, they'll tell you what's been upgraded over and above the Taurus and other D-platform cousins, the Flex, Lincoln MKS and MKT.

The upgrade list is substantial. 

Changes were made to improve chassis strength, especially regarding lateral suspension loads. Off-roading exerts more severe side-loading on a chassis than on-road driving, so upgraded components include the front and rear sub-frames, bushings, lower control arms, steering knuckles, jounce bumpers and steering gear. To help meet Ford's internal standards for towing performance (the Explorer is rated to tow 5,000 pounds), the brakes are also larger than the base Taurus. 



The Explorer's optional all-wheel-drive system is similar to, but significantly upgraded from what lurks under a Taurus with all-wheel drive. An independent cooling circuit was added to the Power Take Off (PTO), the component that sends power to the rear axle (see above, right). In off-road conditions, the Explorer's PTO must be able to transmit lots of torque rearward for extended periods of time. The heat generated by this could easily damage the unit, so the integrated cooler keeps the PTO working in a safe temperature window during heavy-duty use.

As we were blasting through the desert on tires deflated to 15 psi, Ford's Ufford would repeatedly ask one of his engineers riding in the second row to monitor the PTO's temp, as well as the condition of the rear axle's clutch assembly. Located just ahead of the rear differential, the clutch manages the torque split to the rear axle. While the rear differential is an open unit, individual brake application makes the entire assembly work as if the unit is a limited-slip differential.

Even after a particularly rough run through deep sand, the Explorer's PTO temperatures remained comfortably within a safe zone, attesting to the functionality of the new cooling unit. This is quite a feat given the frying pan temperatures and the power-sapping characteristics of the UAE's desert sand.