Product Review: Edelbrock STB

GT Bob · 11-05-2009, 02:06 AM

A while back I had an accident with my car. I detail the accident in the post linked below, as well as talk a little about the ensuing 11 month ordeal trying to get my car right, which ended with 4 days spent with a Ford Engineer... my first post in the thread is #32

http://mustangforums.com/forum/s197-...er-plates.html

So.. after the dealership screwed up my order for the Bullit style STB, and they sold the car that they had loaned me the STB from and needed it back for the new owner, I worked out a deal where the dealership would allow me to source one myself and they would re-imburse me up to the amount of the factory bar. Spent some time looking around now that I had a choice. Because of the amount of flex I was seeing, I wanted the strongest bar I could find, preferably one that triangulated to the Firewall. The only one I could find that did that was the Edlebrock bar. A little more looking (and not finding it on any of the site sponsors pages) I ended up calling up Summit Racing and getting them to drop ship one from Edelbrock directly to me for $130 and some change.

The bar is made of some serious guage tubing... makes the Bullitt bar look like a wet noodle in comparison. All the welds are solid, bends are perfectly radiused, and the bracketry is made from Heavy guage steel, 3/8" or better. All fasteners are grade 8 quality. The bar is in 3 sections. The brackets that attach the bar to the strut towers are seperate from the main body of the bar. Then, where the bar connects to the firewall in the engine bay (which is actually part of the cowl and just a piece of sheet metal, there is a brace that goes behind that piece and braces it against the real structural firewall/windsheild cowl. On a scale of 1 to 10, on construction, I give the bar an easy 10.

Appearancewise, I hafta give the bar a 9 for two small reasons. The first is that on of the brackets had a small flaw in the powdercoating. The flaw is small enough that it's hidden under a washer and truthfully, the entire piece is hidden under the windshield cowl anyway, but it's there. The second reason, is that the Edelbrock sticker on the bar looks cheap and well... ridiculous. First chance I get, the hair dryer and Goo-Gone is coming out and the sticker will go the way of the dinosaur.

The install is pretty straight forward, tho slightly harder than most STB's. Two nuts on each shocktower, 4 holes to drill, and 6 nut/bolt cobo's and it's on. I had a bit more of a time getting it on, but once I found the right spot to jack to relieve the tension on my wracked car, it went on perfect. Test fitted it on my brothers car and no jacking was needed at all. went on perfectly. The instructions are kinda vague, but once you look at the bar and see how it is supposed to go, it almost goes together itself. Install time, with my 16 month old Daughter "helping Daddy" and requiring a 20 minute playbreak was 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Now, for what really matters... function. To say that the Bullitt bar made a huge difference in the chasis flex is an understatement. This bar is as much of an improvement over the Bullitt bar as the Bullitt was over no bar. I dunno if its just because I been driving this thing with it wallowing about like a pregnant pig for 11 months or not, but I almost swear that it was never even thiss good new.

I'll try and get some pics up tommorrow of it, and likely edit this post to be a bit clearer. Been up for the better part of 30 hours here, and finally winding down enough to sleep.

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GT Bob · 11-08-2009, 04:54 PM

So here are the pics. Dunno why it's showing up as sparkly on the bar.. it's clean and certainly not sparkly...

Just a general shot to show how it lays in the engine bay..

The bracket to the strut tower and the hardware that holds it to the bar itself.

The panel/gusset that attaches to the firewall in the engine bay. It has two bolts going thru the firewall that you can't see in this pic, Allen headed and black finished.

The brace that goes behind thew cowl piece in the engine bay to the actual firewall/windshield structure

and the ugly sticker they put on the bar..

Rubrignitz · 11-10-2009, 12:20 PM

That's the only STB I've ever considered and may get one eventually. Thanks for the great review of it.

I helped another forum member install the CHE lower brace and torque limiters last weekend and was REALLY impressed with the lower brace. Really stout piece. I may add the lower K-member brace and/or steeda 3-point framerail and upper ST brace onto my car next month.

GT Bob · 11-17-2009, 02:20 AM

Check your car.. I have an '07 also, and I have a factory lower A arm brace. mine is one of the later build dates (Apr 2007). You may have one as well.

Rubrignitz · 11-17-2009, 09:18 AM

Yes, we pulled that flimsy stock brace off to install the CHE. It's stamped steel and connected to tabs on the K member. The CHE actually bolts onto control arm front bolt AND the one of the tabs. It's also heavy gauge chromoly steel as opposed to stamped steel. Adds a bit of weight but worth it IMO for the bracing felt. The CHE was a major improvement over the stock brace.

johnpagenola · 11-17-2009, 02:27 PM

The Agent47 Strut Tower Brace appeals to me because it attaches at all four points on each strut tower.

The Edelbrock only attaches to two, but it also connects to the firewall.

How did you compare these two?

Thanks.

GT Bob · 11-17-2009, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnpagenola

The Agent47 Strut Tower Brace appeals to me because it attaches at all four points on each strut tower.

The Edelbrock only attaches to two, but it also connects to the firewall.

How did you compare these two?

Thanks.

Honestly, I would have prefered the Edelbrock bar to hit all four bolts. It's about the only thing I listed as a negative to the bar. However, the really importsant thing to me was the triangluation. I was having some serious issues with struture flex and tieing everything together to keep it tight outweighed the relatively minor aspect of the smaller mount. Truth be told, when I get some time, I may just fab up a set of mounts for the bar that uses all 4 holes. Thats the nice part of this piece.. the bar bolts to the mounts that bolts to the Strut towers themselves, which is shown in the second pic above.

As for the lower A arm brace.. I made one to replace the stock piece out of the stock Panhard bar I had. I agree that the stock piece is not the greatest, but it does make some difference.