Steeda S550 GT/GT350 Mustang Road Race Front K-Member (2015-2022)

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!