When a brake shoe breaks down, you have two choices — have the shoe relined or have it remanufactured. But what’s the difference between the two and which is the best for your operation?
“The difference is that remanufacturing is really taking it all the way down and putting all those inspection checks in the process and measuring them back to an OEM specification,” says Tim Bauer, director of remanufacturing for Meritor in North America. “When you look at what has been traditional relining, it’s a very expensive process. Doing things like bake-off ovens to get the product to the state that it’s virgin steel so you’re getting the proper application and those types of things, that’s really the difference in my mind between remanufacturing and relining.”
Process has many components
Meritor’s remanufacturing process is extremely detailed. At its remanufacturing facility in Plainville, Ind., more than 300 employees process 5 million to 6 million brake shoes every year. After inspection, the rivets are removed by punching them out rather than the traditional method of shearing them off.
“It’s a little bit cleaner,” Bauer says. “We’ve found that if you use sheering over time, you tend to elongate the rivet hole a bit. So that rivet hole isn’t necessarily to spec and you can get some loosening of the rivets as you go through that which is why we’ve chosen the punch process.”
From there, the shoes are brought to a bake-off oven, to remove grease and imperfections that are on the shoe table. The next step is to re-coin it.
“Essentially the re-coining process ensures that that shoe is back in the proper shape, to not only fit in the brake assembly but to ensure the long life of the product,” Bauer says.
After the stretch of the shoe is checked, it is sent through a coating process. Meritor’s Platinum Shield coating is baked on to protect the shoe table against micro abrasion — small movements that actually remove typical coatings on brake shoes and expose the steal substrate of the shoe allowing for the creation of rust.
“The platinum shield coating actually protects against that micro abrasion getting to the steel substrate,” Bauer says.
A critic weighs in
While Bauer and Meritor are confident in the remanufacturing process, it does have critics.
Joe Finze, technical trainer of braking systems with MAT Holdings, recommends against remanufacturing due to concerns over the longevity of remanufactured brakes.
“When brake cores come back to the suppliers, they sit outside in big piles, waiting for someone to go through and sort them out,” says Finze, whose Grove, Ill.-based company distributes Bendix brake shoes for medium and small duty vehicles. “They’re exposed to so much more, even after being on a truck once already, now they’re outside in the weather, rusting and deteriorating more and more. In our opinion, you’re not getting nearly the quality with remanufactured as you are with new.”
Finze acknowledges that his concern is not one of safety — no responsible manufacturer would allow a faulty or dangerous product to be sold. Rather, his concerns regard the longevity of remanufactured brakes.
“It’s just going to get stripped and repainted and recoated,” says Finze. “As it wears out, you get more slop in the system and you’ll feel more vibration in your brakes. I’m sure they’ll stop you — that’s not really the issue — but it’s more about noise and vibration.”
Bauer counters that, for Meritor’s part, there are extensive quality controls and inspections in place to ensure that a product that leaves with their brand name is dependable. Meritor’s quality control workers study the thickness of the table and search for excess corrosion on the table and the rivet, as well as oversized holes.
“Even as you do a punch, you can create what we call a double hole, which is (when) the punch misses the hole just a little bit so you create an elongated hole or almost a secondary rivet hole,” says Bauer. “So we’re looking for those all through the process. We’re looking for bad tables. We’re looking for either a bad weld and (if) the anchor became spread and some deformation on the shoe itself. We build it to an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) specification and as an OEM supplier we take great pride in the quality of the remanned product that comes out of our Plainfield facility”
That sentiment is shared by many mechanics and service people who work with the products and have to make the decision between using a relined or remanufactured shoe.
Remanned rebuttal
“Your quality is going to be identical, or different to such a small extent to be unnoticeable,” says Edward Allen, parts manager for Arizona’s Phoenix Fleet Repair. “The only issues we’ve ever had with remanned shoes or relined shoes is occasionally you get one that is bent or has some rust to where one of the measurements is thrown slightly off, and even that is fairly rare.”
Allen says that from his point of view, the question of relining or remanufacturing is just a matter of preference — each are quality products.
“They inspect the cores when they go back and if they’re damaged, they’re not going to remanufacture them or reline them. If you’ve got a really low quality reliner, a local guy or something, then you’re going to have issues no matter what. There’s a lot of liability involved, so they’re very careful about what they reline.”
Allen admits that his company once got a relined shoe which didn’t measure correctly. The shoe was the right width, and the face was correct, but the shoe had been bent through mishandling or possibly had been mismatched with a shoe that was close enough to be unnoticeable.
“We had a brake shoe set where one shoe was measuring a quarter inch shorter than the other. But you couldn’t see it until you put a tape measure to it. If it’s a remanufactured shoe, they’ll probably do that measurement; local guys are more likely to eyeball it. But if it was a structural issue with a shoe or severe rust or anything like that, I don’t know any shoe manufacturer who would take the risk of rebuilding on a backing that wasn’t solid.”
Bottom line on relining
Terry Clark, parts manager for Bayview Trucks & Equipment in New Brunswick, says he finds remanned and relined shoes to be of equivalent quality. “When you look at them one-to-one? I don’t see a difference,” says Clark. “If you get a quality reline, I’ve never had any problems with the brands we use.”
Clark does note, however, that the remanufacturing process benefits from having the tables coined, sandblasted and painted with protective paints to mitigate damage from road salts in order to eliminate rust forming between the pads and the table.
Bauer says the primary reason he’s heard for avoiding remanufactured brakes is cost.
“It’s like a bottle deposit in Michigan, if you will,” says Bauer. “You’re paying quite a bit up front. If you don’t manage that core process effectively, it can cost fleets and users a whole lot of money. That’s the biggest thing I’ve heard in the marketplace about why people shy away from a remanned product.”
Matt Jones is a freelance writer based in Fredericton, N.B.