Ford Performance Strut Tower Brace (15-23 Mustang GT, EcoBoost)

Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys, Adam here with americanmuscle.com. Today, we're taking a look at the Ford Performance Strut Tower Brace, available for the 2015 and newer GT and EcoBoost Mustang. Right off the bat here, if your Mustang did not come with a strut tower brace from the factory, this one here is going to be a good addition to your front end, simply because adding that strut tower brace and the support brace there is gonna stiffen up your chassis, reducing chassis flex, giving you better handling under tight, aggressive cornering situations. Believe it or not, that does make a difference to the suspension and handling performance. Now, a lot of guys might be looking at a strut tower brace thinking that it's just underhood dress-up piece, but honestly, that is not the case. Strut tower brace is exactly what it sounds like, it braces the chassis, connecting the two strut tower mounts, and, of course, that additional brace goes around to the cowl, giving you that added support. This all is made from stamped steel, powder coated in black, both pieces, which gives it a nice aggressive touch under the hood.Now, our EcoBoost here that we're working with did not come with, not only an engine cover, but it didn't come with a strut tower brace. So this is really doing wonders for the underhood dress-up. It looks very badass under the hood here, giving you exactly what you think it should come with from the factory. The black finish here is a nice stealthy look, and the Ford Performance metal plate is already bolted down or riveted down here, giving you a nice subtle touch of branded pride. Everybody likes to rock a Ford part, especially a Ford Performance or Ford Racing part, so that adds a nice touch, in my personal opinion. Now, if you're rocking a Mustang GT, you do have a strut tower brace from the factory, but it does not come with that added support brace. Now, if you have a Performance Pack Mustang GT, it comes with exactly what you see here, the only difference being, it has a silver finish and says Mustang GT. That is the only difference between the Performance Pack option and this Ford Performance addition here from the aftermarket.Now, picking this up here, you can do so for just about 175 bucks, which really isn't too bad considering the benefits here visually and performance-wise. The installation gets the easy one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter, very simple hand tools, like a ratchet, 13-millimeter short socket, and 15-millimeter deep socket will do the trick. I did also use an impact gun to make life a little easier for those easier to reach places. And finally, a panel removal tool will also do the trick. If you don't have a panel removal tool, you can get one from your local auto parts store, but a flat-head screwdriver would do the trick as well. It just makes life easier with that panel tool. Now, without further ado, I'm gonna show you guys how this gets done. You can tackle it in the driveway at home. You don't need a jack or jack stands. There's no cutting, no modifications, no drilling, none of that. So let me show you how it got done.Now, the first step of the uninstall here is actually we're gonna remove our battery cover. Now, in order to do that, there's three plastic twist-on clips, and by twist-on, I mean you really don't need any hand tools. What we're gonna do is just rotate that softly out of place and pull them up. It's really just that simple, no tools needed, twist them up until they're loose, pull both portions out of place. Now, they are two different clips, so they can be attached. You just wanna try to keep them together. If they do come apart, it's all right, you just pop them back in.Now that we got those off, lift off our battery cover, and set that aside. We're gonna use our panel removal tool here to remove a couple of these push pin clips on our plastic cowl panel grille. In order to get those off, we're gonna use this tool to pry up on the center here, pop up that top portion kinda like a plunger style, put it underneath the second portion, and pull up. That'll remove these. Now, we don't need to remove all seven simply because we just have to lift this enough to access two bolts holding on this plastic portion here. Once this is out of place, we'll have enough room to install our new steel panel extension, which I'll show you guys in just a little bit here.Now, we're gonna set these aside, move on to the second one here, get that underneath just to lift it up, up on the second one. As you can see, it's getting a little easier to lift this up here. Now, if you want, you can get a ratchet under there or a wrench, or you can keep removing some more just to lift it up a lot more. So what I'm gonna do is head over to the other side and remove a couple more push pin clips. Now, if they do come apart, it is as simple as just matching up the shape and putting it back down. Here we go.Now, as you can see, we can lift this up here, but we can't fully remove it simply because of these wiper arms. It is unnecessary to completely remove your wiper arms. You can lift this up enough to get a wrench in here to remove these two bolts. There's one right here and there's one a little farther down, right under here. You can get them up enough to get a wrench in there. All right. So now, we can lift this up here to get our ratchet underneath. Now, it does get a little tight in there. So once you have it loosened, you'll be able to pull the ratchet out and get this out by hand.All right. Now the second one, we have to remove that's under this plastic cowl grille, it's gonna be right here. Again, we can get our ratchet in there and get that nice and loose. And once we have that loose enough to take it off by hand, we're just gonna unthread this and get that out of the way. All right. Now, we're switching over to the cordless impact to make life a little easier. We're gonna remove these two bolts. And then, finally, we'll top it off with the two on our strut tower.Now, before we can get these two nuts off of our strut tower, we have to remove this retainer clip on our positive terminal. That, you just apply a little grease and pull straight up on, and then rotate that out of the way. Grab your 15-millimeter deep socket and remove these two nuts. With those two out of the way, you can lift up on this plastic extension to our cowl, pull it out of the way of the battery, and set this aside.From here, we're going to install our steel cowl strut tower extension brace. We're gonna have to go over this side. We're gonna feed this underneath of our positive terminal here. Once we have that under the wiring, we're gonna lift up on our cowl and slide this into place exactly where our plastic one was. Once that's in place, we can go over to the other side and set it over the top of those studs. From here, feed these over the studs, and it'll seat properly. Once we replace our factory bolts that were underneath of this plastic cowl grille, we can do the same thing along this end here and then top it off with our final strut tower brace.All right. From here, you can lift up on your driver's side of that plastic cowl grille. I'm gonna put those factory bolts back into place. We're gonna tighten it all the way down by hand and then take our ratchet and then finish that off. All right. So we're gonna lift up here and tighten this down by hand. All right. Now, we're coming down along this cowl extension here, tightening down our factory bolts again, put them right back into place.All right. Now, we can install our Ford Performance strut tower brace across the center here. We're gonna feed this just like we did the previous one, underneath of that battery harness. Feed that over the studs on both sides. And Ford Performance does provide new nut hardware that you want to install on both sides of your strut towers. Grab your 15-millimeter socket and tighten those down. Now, all we have to do is put our seven push pin clips back across our plastic panel grille and then, of course, put our battery cover back on.Now, for the battery cover, you wanna make sure that your terminal wire or your terminal harness is seated properly. You're putting your retainer pin back into place here on your stud. That'll hold down that wire there, and we can slide the battery cover in place. Take those twist-off plastic trims. Twist these down to tighten them up. With that last twist-on clip tightened down with our battery cover here, we're good to go.That's gonna wrap up my review and install of the Ford Performance Strut Tower Brace in black available for the 2015 and newer GT and EcoBoost Mustang. If you wanna pick one up for your own S550, you can do so right here at americanmuscle.com.