Edelbrock revs up capacity: Edelbrock Corp. banks on Americans' love of the automobile for the success of its cast aluminum aftermarket parts

Modern Casting, Dec, 2008 by Shannon Wetzel, Alfred T. Spada

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.