Stopping Power (April 01, 2005)

It’s strange, really, that anyone would consider brake components to be little more than a commodity, the type of parts purchased on the basis of price alone.

Few things can have a bigger impact on safety than a vehicle’s ability to stop, and most consumers recognize that brake components will wear out over time. Regardless of their mechanical knowledge, customers should also be able to appreciate tangible differences such as shorter stopping distances, quieter performance and cleaner rims that are the hallmarks of premium alternatives.

“I’m always amazed that so many people sell themselves short, thinking that people want the absolute cheapest,” says Jack McGrail, director of product management, brake products at Robert Bosch. “Every store, every wholesaler, every warehouse has tons of options.”

Then again, there’s a business adage that suggests you go where the money is. Not too long ago, that tended to involve value-priced products, admits Joe Stephan, marketing director of brake, chassis and fuel products for Federal-Mogul. “Five years ago, the curve was going in the wrong direction.”

But those who sell brakes suggest that premium components, ranging from friction materials to hardware and rotors, are attracting ever-more interest among shops and consumers–so jobbers should have the products at the ready.

“The biggest things relating to [the use of premium parts] are stopping power, life and durability,” Stephan says of the differences over their value-priced alternatives, adding that quiet performance is equally important.

And friction materials are usually the first consideration.

That being said, the choice of premium friction material involves more than looking for a ceramic or semi-metallic label.

“There’s no one perfect material,” McGrail says. “It really depends on the person’s driving style. What’s important to them? What kind of vehicle do they have? Things like that. A lot of companies are going out and saying ceramics are the cure-all. That’s not entirely true. It’s important not to sell one size fits all.”

Whatever choice is made, benefits are often a matter of trade-offs.

“Usually if you’re fixing one attribute, you’re sacrificing another,” says Brian Fleming, director of under-car marketing at Affinia Canada, which markets Raybestos brakes. (Although with premium grades, the sacrifices can be minimized.) Ceramics and their light-coloured brake dust, for example, can be the leading choice for a customer with brand-new rims and nothing heavier than a car stereo on board. In contrast, a customer with a ball hitch on the back of a pickup may require severe-duty friction materials traditionally made of semi-met formulas.

“Ceramic is just one of those materials that is put into making a brake pad,” Stephan adds.

And Norm Abbott, president of OE Quality Friction Inc., actually shrugs off the talk about ceramics as being little more than “a lot of brouhaha.”

“The semi-metallic materials have been the staple diet of North American cars, and cars coming from Europe have Euro-met.”

Even once you select a material, there are further decisions to be made.

“Ceramics by itself is just one component in the formula,” says Lloyd Hassell, senior product manager for aftermarket friction material at Akebono, which markets ceramic pads. “[We have] over 22 formulas and each formulation has over 20 different materials.”

New materials are also on the horizon. “We’re working on a hybrid material that will be used on police and severe-duty applications,” Hassell says, referring to a product line that should be unveiled this summer. “We’re talking about a product with a great deal of ceramic material and fibre as well as ferrous materials.”

Ultimately, the selection could also be dictated by your shelf space. “Duplicate inventory is not really an option for the smaller locations,” admits Jack Fisher, Canadian territory sales manager with Performance Friction, suggesting that a carbon metallic line may be the best option in these cases. “There is nothing written that says you must replace ceramic with ceramic.”

Neither is there a law that suggests you have to use new hardware when replacing the friction material, but it’s an important step if you want to help shops reduce the noise associated with vibrations.

The hardware — “all the springs and clips and doo-dads” — are key to replicating original-equipment performance, Abbott says.

“Certainly for an installer, for an end user, for the person in a warehouse or part store, it is a system,” McGrail says of the importance of choosing related hardware. “Sell a complete brake job. That would be the disk or drum brake hardware that would go along with it.”

Even hardware offerings include premium selections. Brake pads with stainless steel shims will tend to run quieter for a longer period of time because they resist corrosion, McGrail says as an example, suggesting a traditional or rubberized shim will begin to rust in two to three years.

Then again, some of the challenge has related to the search for premium hardware, which has traditionally been slow to come to market, Stephan adds, suggesting that the aftermarket has tended to introduce hardware a year or two after unveiling the related friction material. “[It was] just assumed the technician or consumer was not going to replace the hardware.”

That, too, is beginning to change, and several suppliers are adding hardware to the boxes of premium friction materials as soon as they’re introduced. When Federal-Mogul brings its European Ferodo products to North America this April, hardware relating to the ceramic pads will be found in the same box. And Affinia packs everything from abutment clips to bushings with its premium friction material. Akebono, meanwhile, adds hardware including wear sensors and drop-in kits.

“Every time we find an application that has an issue, we’ll add something to the box,” Hassell says.

However, he admits that many shops still continue to overlook the included parts and lubricants after they open the box.

Meanwhile, the market for premium rotors has been hammered by the availability of cheaper Chinese designs.

“The rotor market collapsed seven years ago,” Fisher says, referring particularly to offshore products, and a price at acquisition that plunged to $6 from $28.

“Every time you think it’s found its bottom, there seems to be someone that comes in and brings the bottom even lower,” Fleming agrees. “Rotors are being sold for far less than they can be manufactured for [in North America].”

Perhaps that reflected the marketplace. “The general consensus was that a lot of people would be looking at premium pads, but just any old rotor,” McGrail says of some of his own field research.

According to independent research conducted for Bosch, about 36% of North American brake pads sold in 2004 could be considered premium products. In contrast, only 27% of rotors fell into the same category.

“The brake business is horribly price-competitive. People have come to view a brake job like a commodity. Like it’s sugar,” says Jack Buckley, the Bendix Answerman, referring to the way some installers will reach for offshore rotors as a way to cut costs. “But the intent was never to sell a Chinese rotor to a guy with a $40,000 SUV.”

There are several problems relating to cheap rotors. For example, an inferior metal can lead to hard spots, and some offshore manufacturers are selling models with fewer fins–say, 17 as opposed to 20, McGrail says. “It really does make a difference to the integrity of the rotor.”

The veins in offshore rotors can be so thin that they excite the brake pads and lead to noise, Hassell adds.

To compound matters, Fleming refers to some lines of offshore economy products that include only a couple of rotor configurations, compared to a selection of 70 configurations that may be offered at the original equipment level.

In contrast, premium rotors such as designs made of damped iron can even run quieter than their middle-of-the-road counterparts. Numbers from Federal-Mogul seem to point to the fact that these features are being recognized in the marketplace.

“The trend to premium rotors is actually moving pretty good,” Stephan adds of the shift in momentum. “Our premium rotor [sales] have grown by 20% in 2003 and 25% in 2004.”

Ultimately, jobbers and technicians are in the best position to protect consumers from inferior brake products. Many buyers are unaware of the lack of standards to govern aftermarket brake components.

“There really is not an aftermarket standard that guarantees or certifies these brakes are guaranteed to work,” McGrail says. “The best assurance you’ve got is the brand on the box.”

BRAKE WORK NOT ABOUT OLD CARS

One of the underlying facts about brake work in the independent sector is that it is not just about working on older cars.

Statistics from J.D. Power and Associates indicate that, while car dealers do enjoy a strong share of brake jobs on vehicles three years old and under, and just under half the business of those four to seven years old, the independent sector is by no means relegated to working only on old vehicles.

In fact, more than one in five brake jobs on four to seven year old vehicles were performed by independent repair shops.

This should indicate that, while an older-car owner may in some cases be very concerned about pricing on a job, this should not be considered the overriding factor for all customers.