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Brakes Market: Brake Rebuilders Have No Intention Of Slowing Down

By Ed Sunkin

Despite a few bumps in the aftermarket road to success, brake rebuilders have no intention of slowing down. Some brake industry professionals say that demand in the brake rebuilding market is pretty consistent compared to last year.

"The market (in sales) seems to be following the same patterns as last year," said Steve Suber, friction materials manager for EIS Brake Parts, Manila, AR. Suber who also serves as chairman of the Automotive Parts Rebuilders Association (APRA) said this year could be a carbon copy of 1996. "We're not really seeing any new trends," he said. "But in terms of where we're heading, the same issues also continue to be with us."

One of those issues is the shift from the traditional three-step distribution system to a two-step system. Joe Rhodes, president of Util Automotive, Inc., Conyers, GA, a supplier of both used shoes and new replacement shoes, said there's been a general erosion of the various levels of distribution. "The industry used to operate with a three-step distribution level," said Rhodes. "Now we're often just down to two-step and sometimes even one-step." There's also a lot of inventory being sold and not replaced."

Joe Sawa, sales manager at Pennsylvania Brake Bonding Co., Philadelphia, PA, agrees that the three-step distribution system is under siege. Sawa said he sees an industry trend where the smaller rebuilders are losing work to the big rebuilders who can fill the demands of national chains and large volume accounts.

EIS' Suber says another issue that hasn't changed in the brake market is that price remains the driving factor. "There's still a lot of pricing pressure in the market, especially in the second lines and low-end economy applications," he said.

Pennsylvania Brake Bonding's Sawa shares the same sentiment. "Rebuilders are still having a hard time getting the proper pricing for their work because of pricing pressures," he said. "A lot of the brand name manufacturers are offering (lower cost) secondary brands."

Paul Schuck a managing partner of Undercar Express, a Cleveland, OH, brake caliper rebuilding business, said the issue of cost containment is consistent with virtually any business today. "Today's business environment is characterized by constant pressure to reduce costs," Schuck said. "We rebuilders are often faced with price increases from suppliers, and often at the same time, mandatory price decreases from customers."

Util's Rhodes said vehicle improvements from the OEMs also impact today's rebuilder. Rhodes said rear brake systems on vehicles such as the Toyota Corolla and many GM cars are being designed with thicker brake linings. "We're coming into the age of the front-wheel drive vehicles where the rear axles are expected to last a vehicle's lifetime," Rhodes said. "If you buy into that concept, then during the lifetime of that vehicle, it won't need a rear brake job."Because of these changes, Rhodes and others in the industry believe the demand for shoes is decreasing. "When it comes to brake shoes, we're definitely being cut out of the arena," Rhodes said. Rhodes says the market has already seen two sets of pads replaced before a vehicle's shoes need replaced, adding the industry is closing in on a replacement factor of three sets of pads per one set of shoes. "If a set of front pads are lasting to 20,000 and beyond, you're looking at more than 60,000 miles before the rear brakes need work," he said. "That's maybe four years before we even have the opportunity to do a brake job on the rear."

Sawa said some industry estimates show 85% of the brake service done on vehicles today is on front brakes. "We're already seeing front brakes to rear brake replacement at a ratio of 3 to 1," he explained. "Yes, this definitely has some negative connotations for rebuilders."

But rebuilders need not entirely despair. The latest report from the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) predicts that by the year 2000, a new car's expected useful vehicle life (EUVL) will be just under 15 years. Frank Hampshire, director of research for MEMA, said although OEM quality and technology has added to the life span of modern vehicles, it also means less trips to new car dealerships.

"Cars today definitely last longer than they used to," Hampshire said. "This has major implications not only for our industry's vehicle makers and their suppliers, but also for the aftermarket which services and maintains those cars and trucks."

And Sawa said the OEM's design trend of four-wheel disc brakes on some luxury vehicles is making a U-turn back to rear brake shoe applications. "There's been a bit of a comeback of having rear brake shoes returned to some of these vehicles, which is good news for rebuilders," he said, "although the anti-lock braking systems (ABS) designs seem to work better with four-wheel disc brake units."

Rhodes said the longer-life of today's vehicles, along with niche markets and new opportunities for rebuilding ABS units, are helpful to rebuilders. "Because I'm in this industry, I'm emotionally partial to the market and I would like to state that the long term brake market will improve," Rhodes explained. "If we use history as any kind of indicator ñ and if using history is even a valid measuring gauge anymore ñ I believe the work will again come back to us. Once we get some age on these cars out there today, that's when we'll get to work on them."

According to a 1997 brake installers survey provided by MarketScope®, a market research division of Babcox Publications, the percentage of rebuilt replacement brake parts installed by brake shops across the country is 32.4%. This is a bit down from the 1996 survey response of 33.5% of rebuilt brake parts installed on vehicles. The 1995 response was 31.8%.

Changes in vehicle design, such as the introduction of front-wheel drive back in the 1980s, has played an important role in the development of friction materials used today. The shift to front-wheel drive and downsized brake systems has required a new generation of high-temperature friction materials such as semi-metallic. Semi-metallic disc brake pads, with their high steel content and ability to absorb and dissipate heat rapidly, have come into widespread use in the last 10 years.

Sawa said small and large rebuilders each face the challenges of changing friction material formulations. "Downsized automotive braking systems on front-wheel drive cars have prompted the use of semi-metallic and nonasbestos organic friction materials," Sawa said, adding that the development of new formulas of semi-metallics and nonasbestos organics has created a proliferation of friction material formulations.

Gil Laycock, executive director of the Friction Materials Standards Institute, Inc. (FMSI) located in Monroe, CT, which catalogs disc applications, said the number of disc brake total identities assigned has grown immensely. "So far this year there are up to 732 identities assigned by FMSI," Laycock said. "That number has nearly doubled from the 387 identities through 1988."

Laycock said as friction material changes, so too does the designs of the pads. "Rebuilders continue to be faced with the issue of integrally molded (IM) brakes," Laycock said. "The problem we see for rebuilders is the growing amount of integrally molded OE brakes. A lot of rebuilders don't have the capabilities to make replacement parts."

Laycock said nearly all imports today utilize IM brakes, which are designed to be used at higher temperatures for better stopping power. "More and more of the domestics are going with the integrally molded designs," Laycock said. "You obviously can't rebuild or reassemble these because there's no holes in the plates."

Most industry professionals know that the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed ban on asbestos was another factor that played a role in the development of today's new friction materials. Announced in 1986, the ban would have required all new vehicles to have nonasbestos brakes by September, 1993. The aftermarket would have had until 1996 to change over to nonasbestos materials.

The EPA's proposed ban never materialized because it was overturned in federal court ó but not before it set in motion a large scale shift away from asbestos by most friction material suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. New nonasbestos organic (NAO) friction materials were introduced to replace asbestos, and were quickly adopted by vehicle manufacturers.

But in the aftermarket, asbestos is still used in friction material, though its applications have been greatly reduced. One reason it's still around is because it's an economical fiber for low temperature brake applications. Pennsylvania Brake Bonding's Sawa said his brake rebuilding business is about 85% asbestos free. "We don't use asbestos in the disc pads anymore," Sawa said. "But we do still use it in brake shoe linings because in some cases it's still a competitive issue."

Sawa said most of the asbestos linings in the rebuilding market are for older vehicles such as pickup trucks and rear-wheel drive cars that came originally equipped with asbestos shoes and/or pads.

"There's still a lot of good things to say about asbestos," Sawa said. "In the shoes, it's very forgiving to the drums and in the disc pads, asbestos is kind to rotors. These relatively new materials such as Kevlar® and much of the semi-metallic materials aren't as kind to the brake parts."

Sawa said even though nonasbestos materials have replaced asbestos in most standard and premium grade linings, economy grade asbestos pads and shoes are still available from a number of aftermarket brake suppliers.

According to the same Babcox MarketScope report, a survey of brake installers found semi-metallic friction products are the material of choice when it comes to brake repair/installation work. Semi-metallic material was installed by technicians 72.4% of the time this year, up from 69% in 1996 and 67.4% in 1995.

Use of non-asbestos and asbestos friction materials continued to drop, according to survey respondents. Non-asbestos materials were installed in 20.8% of the brake jobs in 1997, down from 23% in 1996, and 23.1% in 1995. Asbestos materials were installed in only 6.8% of brake jobs in 1997, down from 8% in 1996 and 9.5% in 1995.

Leave a mark

One current problem that continues to plague rebuilders is the issue of tagging or marking brake pads. Many rebuilders argue that tagging or marking would allow a rebuilder or installer to easily know if the friction materials contained asbestos, thus enabling them to know how to properly dispose of the material. Earlier this year, APRA appealed to brake lining manufacturers for a universal code system for all non-asbestos lining so they could be properly disposed of, thereby cutting down on the high cost of asbestos disposal for rebuilders.

Mike Conlon, Washington legal counsel for APRA, said the FMSI, too, is looking into a universal marking system. "There have been attempts to get the friction materials manufacturers to provide some sort of marking system for the handling and disposal of asbestos and nonasbestos materials, but nothing yet has been adopted in the industry," Conlon said.

Conlon explained tagging or marking could aid in any special disposal requirements for nonasbestoes materials. Conlon warned some of the asbestos replacement materials may have toxicity problems, too. "There's speculation that the EPA could come up with requirements for disposing of semi-metallic materials down the road," said Conlon. "With a materials marking system already in place, adhering to material disposal requirements wouldn't be as difficult to do."

Installers, too, look for codes to make sure they're replacing a set of pads or shoes with ones that have the same friction characteristics. Though edge codes are not an absolute standard for comparing one friction material to another, these markings will tell something about the hot and cold friction characteristics of the linings.

But the markings are based on a simple "Chase" test performed with a one-inch square sample of material using a special laboratory procedure. Edge codes alone don't give the whole picture because the actual performance characteristics of two different brands of brake linings with identical edge code ratings may perform quite differently when actually installed on the same vehicle.

The industry has been working on this issue for a number of years now, and may have developed a solution. According to the Brake Manufacturers Council, Fort Lee, NJ, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has developed a dyno test procedure (J1652) that correlates disc brake friction performance to a 1992 Chevy Caprice. The testing specifications have been published by SAE. A similar test (J1653) is still being developed through SAE that would do the same thing for the rear brake shoes.

The SAE dyno tests are designed to make "real world" comparisons between friction materials possible so replacement linings can be more closely matched to OE linings. But the current SAE J1652 dyno test has only been verified for one particular vehicle application. Some question whether this same test will generate good data for other vehicle applications, or whether new test procedures will have to be developed for different types of vehicles and brake systems. Some industry leaders believe that if it takes more than a couple of basic test procedures to generate accurate real world comparisons between friction materials, the chance of a new edge code rating system being developed and adopted is slim.

The Brake Manufacturer's Council has been studying this issue in hopes that a new edge code rating system will elevate the overall level of friction performance in the aftermarket. Some in the industry argue such a rating system is needed because there are no safety regulations that apply to aftermarket brake linings today. Brake linings in new vehicles must pass a federal performance test ñ Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 135 ñ which requires burnished brakes to bring a vehicle to a halt within 204 feet from 60 mph. The FMVSS 135 was developed in 1995 in an effort to harmonize U.S. brake standards with international standards for those vehicles.

Sam Daniel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said at this point there are no comparable standards for aftermarket linings. "These standards do not have any jurisdiction over rebuilt or remanufactured brake parts or linings," he said.

The NHTSA has tested aftermarket brake linings and found that most friction materials are acceptable. But NHTSA has also voiced concerns that need to be addressed if regulations are to be avoided. The development of a new rating system would allow the industry to police itself and identify friction materials that are marginal or fail to meet minimum performance standards.

One way aftermarket brake manufacturers can verify if their products are consistent with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards is through a Dual Dynamometer Differential Effectiveness Analysis (D3EA™) developed by Greening Testing Laboratories, Detroit, MI. According to Greening Testing Laboratories' Charles Greening, Jr., the D3EA™ protocol evaluates brake friction materials in vehicle specific hardware and test conditions. "By applying criteria based upon D3EA™, friction material performance can be compared to the full system performance requirements of FMVSS 105 or FMVSS 135," Greening said.

Dr. Thomas Flaim, who created the D3EA™ testing technology, said it is an analytical process that translates the performance provisions of FMVSS into effectiveness limits which can be applied to the laboratory tests. "Vehicles can have different effectiveness requirements, so it is essential to have several platform configurations available," Flaim said. "To make the challenge even more interesting, the same friction material can produce different effectiveness levels in various vehicle brake systems. D3EA allows the user to identify friction materials suitable for use in the subject vehicle."

Greening said a certification seal will be applied to replacement materials meeting the platform specific criteria. McHenry, IL-based Brake Parts, Inc., manufacturer of Raybestos brakes is the first aftermarket brake supplier to adopt D3EA validations; D3EA validations are available to any friction material manufacturer.

Niche markets

Undercar Express' Schuck said with the average age of vehicles on today's roads continuing to increase, the remanufactured caliper market has a bright future. Schuck explained Undercar Express' Road Ready™ remanufactured brake caliper line includes such features as phenolic pistons, new rubber parts and bleeders and noise suppression shims.

Schuck said the idea of a complete, ready-for-installation caliper is already popular on the West Coast. "It's really taken off like crazy out there; we're also seeing a lot of interest in it on the East Coast and in the Midwest," he said.

Schuck said his new company is rebuilding about 4,000 Road Ready calipers a month. "We expect this product to be about 90% to 95% of our total sales," he said.

Schuck said he believes the reason for the popularity of this niche market is the time savings it provides to installers. "These types of calipers may cost more money, but the installer gets more value for that cost because they can reduce service bay time as much as 50%," said Schuck.

"This is important to the installer who can use his bays more efficiently. We're seeing a trend where the number of service station and garage bays are getting smaller, while at the same time, there's a growing number of older cars on the road."

Schuck said parts proliferation concerns also are prominent in the caliper rebuilding market. "Parts proliferation continues to be a critical issue in brake parts rebuilding," he said. "With a rebuilt product such as a caliper, much of the time used by the installer to look up and order parts from a catalog has been eliminated. These calipers are ready to hang." Schuck used the example of the Honda Accord, which features many different caliper designs.

"There's differences in the caliper for the Japanese-built Accords compared to those built in the U.S., said Schuck. "And the two-door version caliper is different than the four-door version. For instance, the piston in the two-door vehicle may be 2mm smaller. There's so many versions of calipers for the Accord that when we get an order for one, we'll joke and ask, 'what color is the car?' "

Thomas Moalli, vice president of TEK-MOTIVE, Inc., East Haven, CT, said there seems to be more attention being directed toward severe-duty brakes and application specific materials. Moalli, whose company manufactures disc brake pads for severe-duty vehicles such as police cruisers, ambulances and taxis, said these applications could provide a high-quality niche market opportunity for rebuilders.

"Because of how these emergency vehicles are used and what they are used for, higher speeds and heavy stop-and-go-driving, a lot of these vehicles are being installed with higher-quality braking materials," he said. "There's more of a concern that these vehicles be equipped with braking systems that can handle more aggressive driving."

Moalli said the market for severe-duty brakes has been around for quite a while, but it was never given that much attention. "Severe-duty applications have always been there, but only now are they being addressed by the people in marketing throughout our industry," said Moalli. "The information about severe-duty applications is even being directed at the general public now, to those who may want these performance materials for their own cars."

Other disc brake pad manufactures, such as Forodo America, Inc., have used the application specific market to their advantage. Bill Humphrey, Ferodo America's vice president of aftermarket sales and marketing, said Ferodo America's SpectraOne™ line, originally introduced in 1994, was the first true application specific disc pad offered. Forodo recently expanded its SpectraOne application line to include HyperMet™ pads, a specially-formulated, high-heat, semi-metallic compound that was developed for severe-duty applications.

For a complete list of brake components and friction material manufacturers, see Automotive Rebuilder's January 1997 Automotive/Truck Purchasing Directory.

Earlier this year, APRA also made available a report on the economics and feasibility of remanufacturing ABS brakes. The project was completed through the Rochester Institute of Technology and funded by APRA. Bill Gager, president of APRA said the report shows there are opportunities in ABS for rebuilders.

"We are very pleased with the report published by the College of Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology," Gager said. "The work done by Dr. Nabil Nasr and his team will be very helpful to members of the rebuilding industry as they evaluate whether or not to rebuild ABS units."

Gager said those who order a copy of the report will also be able to telephone Nasr and his team to get answers to questions they may have. For more information on the report, contact APRA at 703-968-2772.