New front rotors for 300m

Bought a new set of front rotors (Canada Tire) for my 2000 300m. Had
2 choices - standard quality and "premium" quality. Difference seems
that one is made in China, the other in the US of A. Since the
standard quality ($60 each) was out of stock, I bought the premiums
($75 each, or $62 USD).

The box (white) was pretty much devoid of any branding, other than a
Monroe decal ( - used under license from Tenneco Automotive). There
were a bunch of numbers on the box.

Internet searches for BD125638 comes back as a Wagner PN from several
sources. Bar Code 008536425717 comes back as Cooper Industries, which
has a Wagner brake division (previously known as Federal-Mogul ?)

Not sure why these Wagner rotors need to have a Monroe label on them
(what's the connection?)

The rotors themselves have the following castings:

Century
Made in U.S.A.
637090
MINTHK 24.4 mm

My original rotors were turned Apr 2004 and over the past few months I
was getting too much pulsing during braking. They were down to 0.973
inches (and weighed 14.5 lbs each). The new ones are 1.027 inches
(26.1 mm) and weigh 17.7 lbs each. Some say the thickness of the
originals (when new) are supposed to be 1.019 inches (but I think they
were at least 1.020 and probably closer to 1.025.

I estimate that rotor wear is something like 0.4 to 0.6 thou per 1000
miles.

In reading some of the brake stuff that has come up doing these
searches, it occured to me that I should have take a wire wheel to the
hub and made sure it was perfectly clean before mounting the rotors.
Oh well, I guess I'll be doing that when the snows go on.

 

The quality Brimbo rotors I purchased for my PT Cruiser were made in Canada.

Richard.

 

Don't even try to figure out the aftermarket world with all it's legal
and marketing cooperative agreements and third party
manufacturing/labeling contracts. We had a similar discussion of this
nuttiness a couple of days ago (see thread titled "Moog Sway Bar Links").

As you can see on this Federal Mogul home page, they own Wagner:
http://www.federal-mogul.com/cda/homepage/index/0,2190,2283,00.html

This may help too:
http://www.detnews.com/specialreports/2002/asbestos/a13-453344.htm
Scroll down and read under the "Troubles Surface" heading for the FM -
Cooper connection.

Doesn't matter what "some say". My '99 LH car FSM says that a new
rotor thckness is 1.019 to 1.029 - so your part was within the
designated OEM tolerances.

Not a bad idea to do that to make sure there's not some rust that may
tilt rotor and wheel and cause vibration (if no vibration, then no need
to brush it - but good prevention practice for any future work you do).

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

When you read that, it becomes clear why manufacturing and material
processing is increasingly being done overseas (China, Mexico, etc).

 

Yikes (re: asbestos racket that has decimated Federal Mogul). The Wall
Street Journal has had many editorials on how the asbestos racket is
destroying responsible companies (read employers and American Jobs), but
that article in the Detroit News really hits home. A few lawyers and
their class action lawsuits are destroying entire industries by getting
$$ millions and $$ millions of tort money due to alleged practices
decades ago, and this is from people who aren't even sick and there is
no reason to believe that they will ever get sick. Jackpot justice
doesn't even describe this as the "injured" aren't injured at all.
Eventually even the lawyers will lose when the golden goose dies as all
of the companies they can sue throw in the towel, forever.

 

The previous CEO had to be a moron to buy into asbestos litigation.

 

wrong, they are destroying entire companies.

Correct, that is why so many companies flee to bankruptcy court when
things go awry. And not just companies, the Catholic Church is doing this
in the face of all the priest sex abuse claims.

But it is rediculous to feel sorry for F.M. They are going to end up far
stronger post-bankruptcy. The company will do fine. It's the investors
that get screwed. And this is a perfect example of why many companies
don't permit employees to put all their 401K into a single companies stock
and only give them options of different plans. Investment 101 says to
diversify your investments precisely to avoid the kinds of sob stories
you read about here.

Ted

 

The company's board could/should have been sued for failure to do proper due
diligence. I guess you guys would not want to see another lawsuit though.

 

Post Enron, a lot of corporate Boards suddenly woke up to the fact that
they are supposed to be overseeing the exec staff.

I never have had a problem with lawsuits against corporate managers. The
Asbestos lawsuits are not like that, however, they are against the
corporation,
not against the clods that steered the corporation into the mud. Big
difference, that.

Ted

 

Management conduct in this case seems to be inexcusable. Even if they
wanted to buy another company, they could have operated it as a separate
subsidiary and the parent would have been untouchable financially.

 

Or another thing that companies often do is buy a company, operate it as
a subsidiary, then start making all the purchased companies products
themselves,
setup joint marketing ventures and start dropping items from the
subsidiaries
product line and weaning the customers from the subsidiary to the parent.

Ted