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Beral® Brand Puts Real Power Behind 'OE Quality' Claim
Several commercial-vehicle friction brands claim to offer "OE quality" replacement brake pads. The key question for distributors, service providers and, most importantly, fleet customers is what does "OE quality" really mean? If pads simply look and/or fit like the originals, can you be certain their performance and wear characteristics also will meet the unique demands of the vehicle?
Federal-Mogul's CV friction team recent ly compared three aftermarket competitors' brake pads with one of the most popular materials - FM4550 - utilized in Beral® pads. The result? The other competitors weren't even close to the Beral pads in three key areas - pad wear, disc wear and brake torque performance.
"It's important that fleets and vehicle operators understand the vast differences between one manufacturer's brake pads and those from a true global OE friction supplier," said Laura Fasoli, Federal-Mogul Product Manager, CV Braking, Europe, Middle East and Africa. "Customers need and expect best-in-range stopping performance and durability, and that's what they get with Beral brake pads."
In a "GS Wear Test," in which the brake pads are applied in 500 cycles from 60kph to 10 kph at three different operating temperatures, the Beral pads delivered a consistently significant advantage in measured pad wear. In fact, one aftermarket competitor's pads wore out before the test was completed. A related wear test, in which brakes were applied to slow the vehicle from 100kph to 50kph, demonstrated essentially the same Beral advantage over competing products. Once again, in two of the three temperature ranges, a key competitor's pads failed to complete the test.
In a "Disc Wear Test" featuring 10 cycles of 500 brake applications each at various temperatures and speeds, Beral pads created approximately one-half the disc wear (measured in weight) than the next best-performing competitor, and less than one-third the wear of the third competitor's pads. In fact, disc wear test could not be performed in another competitors' pads due to pad failure prior to completion of the wear test.
In a "GS Performance Test," in which brake torque was measured at 80kph (initial temperature) at three different air chamber pressures, Beral pads significantly outperformed all three aftermarket competitors.
"The difference between our pads and those from aftermarket competitors can be traced to our unique focus on offering application-targeted solutions that provide OE braking performance under all conditions," Fasoli said. "The Beral brand's OE quality promise is exactly that - a promise of performance rather than simply a marketing catchphrase."
