Ford F-150 Owner Shocked To Find “Horse Hair” Coming Out of Truck’s Exhaust

A Ford F-150 owner was dismayed to find a long length of what appeared to be horse hair being dragged behind his truck this week. Owner A.B. found the stuff hanging out of the tailpipe of his truck. It prompted him to ask members of a popular F-150 social media group for help. A.B. posted:

Took the truck for a drive, and when I got out, I saw this stuff hanging out of the tailpipe.

I’m an engineer by training and a (lousy) backyard mechanic for over 40 years, and I have never seen this on any vehicle I owned, or even spotted in traffic. To say it’s rare would be an understatement. However, A.B. discovered that many of his fellow Ford F-150 Owners have also had this happen to them. Here are a few of the comments sent to him after his post:
R.A. - “What year is your truck? Mine is a 21 5.0. I had the same stuff hanging out of my tailpipe. It was about 30’ long, waiving in the wind as I was going down the highway. I pulled over and pulled out what I could. The truck was noticeably louder. Dealer replaced with a new stainless muffler, and it runs better and is quiet again.”
J.J. - “This also happened to me.”

The comments under the post trended heavily toward joke answers. Most were a bit off-color, so we can’t repeat them in our story, but there were two very funny ones we can show you:
S.F. - “You just lost about 25 horsepower!”
J.C. - “Unbeweavable!”  

J.C.’s comment was our favorite of them all, though the adult-rated ones were pretty good too. More than a few of the funny jokes were related to a certain politician’s orange hair. They were a bit mean-spirited, so we suspect you can figure out the gist of them.

Owner R.A. is clearly on the right track. The stuff appears to be sound-absorption packing for part of the exhaust system.  Now, is it the Catalytic converter?  No, it is not. That part has a metal-impregnated ceramic honeycomb as its working bit. It’s not the actual tailpipe, which is, well, a pipe. Muffler is a word we often use for the part that may contain this stuff, but more accurately, we think it is the resonator that has coughed up its packing and spat it out the back with help from the products of combustion stream.  

We did a bit of research, and the hive mind feels that the material is from the resonator, not the muffler. They do similar work, but don't tell that to an exhaust expert unless you want a lengthy discussion about the underbits of pickups.

We can safely say that the material is not actually part of a horse. It’s not a coyote that went into the air intake and out the tailpipe like the chickens in Chicken Run (Chickens go in…Pies come out). It’s almost certainly not the wig of a North American two-time president. We must say those were all pretty good guesses, though. 

This one has been solved best by other members of the F-150 group. However, we’re not ready to throw in the towel on wrong guesses. If you have an idea of what came out the back of the truck, please post in the comments below. Wrong answers only, please. Let’s have some fun. 
 

Our thanks to Facebook F-150 5.0 Group member, A.B., for agreeing to share these images with us.  

John Goreham is a 14-year veteran of Torque News. An accomplished writer and a long-time expert in vehicle testing, Goreham also serves as the Vice President of the New England Motor Press Association and has a growing social media presence. He’s also a 10-year staff writer and community moderator for Car Talk. Goreham holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an undergraduate Certificate in Marketing. In addition to vehicle and tire content, he offers deep dives into market trends and opinion pieces. You can follow John Goreham on X and TikTok, and connect with him on LinkedIn.