Hi everybody Brian from Steeda.com, here today spotlighting our
Road Race K-Member for the Ford Mustang S550 GT, Shelby GT350, 350R and GT500.
In the early 1900's Henry Ford revolutionized the auto industry with
the mass assembly line and I bring this up because well over
100 years later we're still utilizing that and this is a great thing
because it makes high performing cars like the Mustang
much more affordable and easier to replicate as far as
thoroughness in their build. Now the downside to this is stampings in
particular the Factory K-Member. Now we've talked a lot about
this on the back of the car and you can see that many of the other videos.
However the front end is no different. The cars are assembled in pieces and the
Front K-Member has the front suspension installed on it,
the engine installed on it and the steering rack
and then it's simply bolted up to the car.
Now that assembly isn't so much the problem as it is the way that it's made,
stamped steel. One it's heavy weight obviously we know that,
Weight is the Enemy of Performance.
Now another weakness to this stamped factory K-Member is that it's weak.
Not so much in the sense that it's not strong enough to hold the engine, the
steering rack and the front suspension. It does all that and it does it well in
particular on the street but the reality is when you start to
push this thing at Autocross Events or on the track, you really start to
notice the weakness. We know this best because we prototyped
this on our Red 2018 S550 Mustang. In particular with Hot Shoes Glen
behind the wheel and let me tell you what I was riding
along with him in some of the stuff and if you haven't seen it, this is a great
opportunity to Subscribe to our Youtube Channel
and check out some of these videos. Glen is a madman out there!
He pushed and pushed and pushed. Now it's also important to realize that
this 2018, the red car you've seen so much of this is a street car and what's
important to us is to be able to take something
that would improve that car and something that you would be able to
relate to but we also prototyped this on our
Yellow Number 20 SCCA Race Car. This is also a car that
Glen pilots and we tested it around Sebring,
Palm Beach International Raceway, Homestead, Daytona and Road Atlanta
and this thing has passed with flying colors.
When developing the Steeda Road Race K-Member, we focused on
strength over weight savings. We'll come back to the weight savings in a moment
but we focused on the strength because it's an area of improvement in
the car. As noted earlier there's a lot of responsibility that the
K-Member has. It's responsible for holding the engine in place,
the steering rack and the suspension. Now it's important to think in particular of
how the steering and the suspension work together
and this is where it really starts to shine. The K-Member by being stronger
will give you better steering feedbacks when you're really pushing the car
through the corners, whether it be again Autocrossing or at a track day.
You will feel the difference. You'll have more precise turn in
and more importantly confidence. You're going to feel more of what's happening
through the corner. You're going to understand more of what's happening to
the front tires as they're starting to scrub
or push a little bit and it's very important as a driver
to have a sensitivity to these things and when the car
masks them or you can't feel those things, it impairs you as a driver or it
appears your performance as a driver. These are things that we wanted to resolve.
Now it's also important to note that
on the street there's no downside to this. Though we
deem this as a competition part, on the street it's simply stiffer. There's no
additional noise vibration or harshness. In fact it bolts directly to the car.
No modifications are needed. You can reuse the factory belly pan and
simply use wide zip ties which are provided
to tie up the back points of that belly pan. So you still maintain your full aerodynamics.
This is important for those of you running high-speed tracks.
Also the K-Member is an integral part to the chassis
and by stiffening up the K-Member making
unit that's far stronger than the factory piece
you're stiffening the chassis and by doing this it allows the suspension
to do the work as opposed to the chassis flexing. This is very important under
hard cornering as well as setting the car up initially.
This means that you can set up the spring rates and the suspension
to suit how you're driving the car, the tires you're using, the alignment that
you want and you don't have to worry about the
chassis flexing because this helps resolve it. Now how does it do this?
We're glad you asked. We've reinforced many of the points on this.
Since the Front K-Member is a key component to the core strength of the
front of the car and it's responsible for holding the
front suspension which of course is important when you're
talking about the cornering loads that we're going to be putting on this thing.
It was important to come at this and focus on key areas to improve
the rigidity as well as the strength. There's a couple key areas here we're
certain that you've noticed the gussets, the boxed out sections
and again the massive diameter tubing that we've used, that's also thicker wall
for stiffness and strength. As noted we reinforced some very important areas
on the K-Member and one of these places is where the
lower control arm or lateral link mounts. It's important because this is a key
pivot point. This is the point that the front wheel carrier rides on
and literally is a lateral connection to the car. The other pivot point well
is the K-Member and now there's some adjustability here.
We've offered adjustment for track width meaning that if you want to run the
front wheels out a little bit wider let's say you're running a staggered
setup and you've got a little bit of understeer and want to dial that out you
can run a little wider track setup or if you're running a square setup and
you want to narrow the track width a little bit to ensure that the front
tires don't rub the fenders, you have that option. Now building on
this even further, there's height adjustment here as well.
Not ride height adjustment, but roll center adjustment.
When you lower the car you effectively change the roll center of the car.
So there are two mounting points, a lower mounting point and a higher mounting point.
If you have our extended height ball joints on the lateral links
you'll use the lower mounting point if
you're using the factory control arms, you'll bolt it into the upper mounting point.
This will effectively, correct roll center. Now when you're
doing this it is imperative that you also pair this with our Bump Steer Kit.
When making a substantial modification to your car like this,
information is key and we're here to assist you.
It's important because we want to help you get the setup just right.
One for your needs, two to bring those lap times down.
If you have questions or would like assistance, definitely don't hesitate to
call us, reach out to us on social media or post below.
We're going to get you going faster!
While turning countless laps at a number of different race tracks we learned very
quickly that the factory Front K-Member
definitely needed something tying in the rear mounting points, those are the
ones closest to the firewall and thus we developed our
Two-Point G-Track Brace and our Four-Point G-Track Extreme.
Now when you're improving and upgrading to our Road Race K-Member,
we've also integrated a G-Track Brace and this piece is fully removable.
So if you need to service the transmission. great! Another thing that we wanted to
talk about is, when you're doing routine things on the car like changing the oil,
there are no clearance issues, in fact you have additional room.
Speaking of additional room, for all of our guys are going forced induction
which seems to be a very popular thing to be doing whether
it be a twin turbo setup or some level of a supercharger setup.
There's plenty of additional room under the car. A lot of our guys with
Hellion Sleeper Kits, love this K-Member because the additional space
to mount the turbos right ahead of that G-Track Brace that we referenced.
To not keep you waiting any longer
we had mentioned that this is also lighter than the stock units we've been
able to achieve a much stiffer and stronger piece while
also being 20 percent lighter and yes this includes
the integrated G-Track Brace 20 percent lighter than the factory unit.
Once again, saving weight and helping performance.
The Steeda Road Race K-Member is a direct replacement for the factory piece
and no major modifications are required to the car to install it.
We do recommend professional installation as it is a pretty tricky process.
Also be sure to make provisions to have the car aligned afterwards.
Throughout the video, we have focused on
the strength and rigidity of our K-Member, as well as the weight savings but let's be realistic.
We've really talked about the strength
that it brings and improvements to the car.
So what does this mean to use a driver? This means that you're going to have
more confidence as you're tracking through a corner.
That the car is going to stay on the line that you have set it to.
This is going to give you better feedback through the steering wheel.
This is also going to allow the suspension to do the work versus the chassis twisting.
You can run slightly softer springs you
can adapt your sway bar settings to the stiffer chassis, the stiffer front end
and better turn in that you're going to feel and just as importantly
coming back to this confidence thing, as you're hauling ass through
110, 120 mile per hour corner, you will be confident that the car will stay on the trajectory that you chose.
While performance is extremely important,
so is quality. We proudly manufacture
this in the USA out of Valdosta Georgia facility, because Speed Matters!
If you'd like to learn more about this
and many of the other parts that we offer for the Mustang, as well as
Ford vehicles visit us at Steeda.com.
Most importantly have a phenomenal day!