Shannon Wetzel, Managing Editor, and Alfred Spada, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

Edelbrock Corp., Torrance, Calif., was born in the heyday of hot rods, when car enthusiasts began to tinker with speed, and weekend races in the dry lakes of California were chances to show souped up versions of street cars. The races were tests of driving ability as well as engineering ingenuity. Fast cars gained attention, and often it was what was under the hood, more than behind the wheel, that demanded attention.

Vic Edelbrock was an auto mechanic who felt the pull of hot rods and dry lake racing. A racer himself, he designed an intake manifold for a boost of power. The manifold’s performance at the races gained notoriety, and soon, Edelbrock, and his new namesake company, had a catalog of parts available to hot rod enthusiasts and race car drivers.

Over the years, the company has grown to produce parts for an increasing variety of cars. It stays ahead of the market by recognizing the hundreds of subgroups of car enthusiasts and fulfilling the needs of each niche.

For a company that was started by a tinkerer, product development is the cornerstone, boosted by its partnership with NASCAR and supported by in-house metalcasting and machining operations.

Now run by Edelbrock’s son Vic Edelbrock Jr., Edelbrock Corp. is poised to break new ground in the automotive aftermarket, despite the current economic downturn. Americans will always love their cars, Edelbrock points out. To carry the company into the next era of this automotive affair, he waved the green flag for an expansion of Edelbrock Corp.’s metalcasting capabilities—adding a permanent mold facility to its green sand plant to expand capacity and meet the anticipated need for higher volumes of parts.

Edelbrock visits weekly the two casting facilities, which are a short trip from the company’s Torrance headquarters. He makes it a point to run them according to the philosophy his father used when the company first started: Always make what you want and what you want to sell to your customer. And make sure it works.

For Edelbrock, running the casting facilities is critical to achieving that philosophy. “I wanted to control my own destiny,” he said. “I saw building an in-house metalcasting facility as a way to do that.”

Castings Move In-House

When at 26 Edelbrock found himself behind the wheel of the automotive aftermarket company his father had started, he was surrounded by loyal—and knowledgeable—people ,who had worked at Edelbrock Corp. from the beginning, to help ease the transition after his father’s early death in 1962.

“My father had a lot of great friends that looked over my shoulder,” Edelbrock said.

Keeping those individuals who had proven their value to the company was a skill of Vic Edelbrock Sr.’s that was passed on to his son. Throughout its first few decades, Edelbrock Corp. relied on Buddy Bar Castings, South Gate Calif., to produce all of its manifolds and cylinder heads. But as the company grew, Vic Edelbrock Jr. began to toy with the idea of making the castings in-house. He was happy with the relationship between the company and Buddy Bar’s manager, Ron Webb, but he had a vision that would require expanded capacity that Buddy Bar did not have the room for. He wanted to move further into the cylinder head business, which required a new alloy (A356 as opposed to 808 aluminum alloy for the manifolds) and the ability to pour larger castings. Edelbrock also saw that not many green sand metalcasting facilities were available to produce the size and volume of parts that he would need.

When Edelbrock learned that Webb was leaving to start his own casting facility, the decision was made for him. He quickly enlisted Webb to help build and run the corporation’s own facility.

“Ron Webb was a real foundryman that they had there [at Buddy Bar],” Edelbrock said. “You need that for a successful metalcasting facility."

Built in 1989, the green sand facility spans 700,000 sq. feet and operates three molding lines that are fed by two new furnaces that use a third of the gas the original furnaces used. The company uses an in-house engineered robotic ladle system that taps the furnace and pours the molds to streamline production. Edelbrock Corp. also produces its own cores (using 24 core machines) around a central conveyor. Employees assemble core packages and send them down the line via this conveyor. A robotic grinding cell is used for high value parts, and the shakeout system, also engineered in-house, features a minimal footprint, saving floor space. Edelbrock Corp. also heat treats most of its NASCAR parts and cylinder heads.

In 2007, Edelbrock expanded its casting capabilities by adding a separate automated permanent mold shop and heat treating facility to counter the growing number of permanent mold castings produced by the company’s European competitors. The permanent mold line utilizes a single robot that sets the cores in the tooling, pours the molten aluminum into the molds, and picks the solidified castings from the tooling and places them on a conveyor belt for further cooling and to be taken to a core shakeout area.

Green sand continues to be the main casting process and still produces the quality desired, but permanent mold can produce stronger, denser and better looking castings. Most Edelbrock manifolds and cylinder heads are still produced in green sand, but efforts are underway to cut permanent mold tooling costs to make it more economical for smaller volumes. Currently, volumes in green sand can go as high as 30,000 to 40,000 per year, but the permanent mold line will be able to meet demand for even higher volumes.

With in-house casting capabilities, the design and prototyping department benefits from the knowledge and responsiveness of the metalcasting facility. The design team and metalcasting engineers work with each other to create a part that can be cast successfully and economically while still meeting the performance and aesthetic requirements.

“On the superchargers, for instance, we have a very complicated casting that is the center of that system, and it takes good foundry minds to figure out how you are going to make it where you don’t have holes where holes shouldn’t be,” Edelbrock said. “Having that at your doorstep really makes a difference. There’s no sense in designing it if you can’t make it right.”

Edelbrock Corp. doesn’t make only Edelbrock parts. Between 10 and 15% of its metalcasting production serves outside customers in other markets that fit its capabilities.

Enduring Market

Edelbrock Corp.’s end-users consist of automobile enthusiasts who are looking to restore classic cars and improve their performance. The company also continues to be involved in racing and is the official independent manifold maker for NASCAR.
The company’s role in racing is a two-way track. Edelbrock’s research and development team has helped improve the performance of dozens of NASCAR automobiles, while the racing organization presses the manifold and cylinder head maker to continue to tweak its designs for a better engine.

NASCAR’s demands may be more stringent than the typical car enthusiast, but many of the features of NASCAR parts filter down into the mainstream market. Racing makes up 25% of Edelbrock’s business, but it affects most of the products under it.

“The mainstream customers want what would be considered a performance car,” Edelbrock said. “For instance, there is a niche market for ’80 and ’90 Camaros that people are buying and modifying with manifolds, heads, fuel injections and throttle bodies that we cast in aluminum, and we make the car perform the way that person in that niche wants.”

With a timeframe spanning several decades, car enthusiasts have a large pool of car models from which to choose, and Edelbrock Corp. is forever trying to pinpoint what will be the next popular car. The formula for forecasting mixes a little bit of premonition with product development. For instance, last year, the company recognized an increase in activity surrounding the Chevrolet 409. People loved the car, but cylinder  heads for that model could not be found. So Edelbrock Corp. began making them.

“In this business, you have to look for openings,” Edelbrock said. “It’s very hard to forecast because it
just depends on what our research and development can set up.”

Edelbrock’s main cast products are manifolds and cylinder heads, which are often sold as part of a power package to supercharge an engine.

“Our customers want what is called seat-of-the-pants performance—to feel the power when they leave the traffic signal and cross the intersection,” Edelbrock said.

Because it serves enthusiasts who own their cars as a hobby, the automotive aftermarket is not tied closely to the automobile industry, and according to Edelbrock, the company has been able to distance itself from the U.S. automobile industry’s recent pains. In fact, in other periods of a slow economy, Edelbrock Corp. saw an increased interest from those who would rather refurbish a used car than purchase a new one.

The most recent economic downturn has been a little different. Even when customers take into account the relatively good fuel mileage of a rebuilt engine and the appeal of spending less on a used car than on buying a new one, the money spent in the automotive aftermarket is still discretionary dollars. Rebuilding a hobby car is low on the priority list when money is tight.

But Edelbrock has faith in his company and the industry. According to him, restoring cars is not a passing trend. “The love affair people have with their cars is so great,” he said. “We know the enthusiasm will be there when we get out of [the recession].” MC