First Brands (Fram) bankruptcy

MParr said:
FRAM and Autolite were acquired in 2019. Champion Laboratories was acquired in 2020. I wouldn't call six years a very long time.
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I thought it was earlier....When did Jay Buckley (motorking on here) start posting about it? It was long before 2020 IIRC.
 
lbhsbz said:
I thought it was earlier....When did Jay Buckley (motorking on here) start posting about it? It was long before 2020 IIRC.
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Motorking was working for Fram when Trico bought them.

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ZeeOSix said:
And what did they tell you the efficiency was on the Boss? I called them today as said in post 156 where I gave the info. The Boss and Purolator 20K are the same guts (first time I heard that), and both are rated at 99% @46 microns. Straight from Purolator's Tech Dept. and that matches the official M-H Spec Sheet. Are they now wrong too because places like Amazon are still using the old efficiency claim?
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Thanks for calling. I got about the same level of knowledge. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked at all the cut open Walmart gold purolators. Only a few things are the same as the Boss. Reinforces what I already said.
There needs to be a new set of tests to clear the field of the two tests that don’t match.
I wonder if the Boss will go even lower in price and they will discontinue it? The filter is very heavy, it may cost too much to make with increasing material costs.
 
Fair enough said:
Maybe I shouldn’t have looked at all the cut open Walmart gold purolators. Only a few things are the same as the Boss.
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Yeah, the guy I talked to at Purolator made it sound like the Boss and 20K were the same guts, but they really aren't - Purolator's website shows that. Maybe he thought that because he said they are both rated at 99% @ 46u and for up to 20K miles of use. I wasn't going to get into it about the difference in media between the two.
 
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So does First Brands own all of Michelin or just the wiper division? I recently read somewhere that the tires are not as good as they once were. Curious if this is related to First Brands and if they let the QC go on tires too? Speaking of wipers I just bought some off Amazon for my Camry. Forgot the brand but it was random. They seem fine. Lol
 
Dang...I was just about to buy some Trico wiper blades (tried out some last year that worked pretty well) AND my latest Mahle OC-54 oil filter was manufactured in China, instead of Austria as it had been for the last 15 years
 
Surfdog4 said:
Dang...I was just about to buy some Trico wiper blades (tried out some last year that worked pretty well) AND my latest Mahle OC-54 oil filter was manufactured in China, instead of Austria as it had been for the last 15 years
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You might want to try the trico blades then stock up if there still good. I have a feeling the quality decline is just starting - if First Brands is this far gone a bunch more companies can't be far behind.
 
VWRand said:
I have used Mann filters for my Volkswagens for decades and will continue to do so. They make the OEM filters
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Same here, the German made Mann seem to be a whole different animal for now but things are getting sketchy with importing parts for the next few years anyway. Subaru dropped Fram as their OE supplier and went back to Tokyo Roki made in Japan.
 
lbhsbz said:
The problem runs much deeper than oil filters. If you remember back when Motorking was around....he worked for Fram when it was owned by the Rank Group, and Bendix (allied signal) before that. First brands bought up a bunch of brands from the Rank group, and proceeded to get rid of everyone who knew what they were doing because they were expensive. This is exactly what they did when they purchased Raybestos and Centric, then took the people that had been historically worthless and promoted them. They completely ignored the aspects that had made the companies successful, and just treated it like any other brand of commodity widgets. Lots of wasted time/money on completely pointless things, Customer service was all offshored to Mexico / Romania, and anyone with any knowledge of what it is we did there was let go. Customers all started jumping ship to other suppliers. They also stopped paying their billls.

One company in particular that they bought, a few years after I'd left (I was both a customer of and a vendor to this company at this point) they immediately sent out emails announcing 200% price increases across the board, and then a few months later doubled it again. Everyone got this increase, not just me. So they basically fired all their customers.

There's tons more, but I don't know enough of the details to really comment on it. Lots of "creative" book keeping and financing to fuel more acquisitions....and then the house of cards fell down.
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This is 100% facts right there. I had to jump back in just to read this thread.
 
OVERKILL said:
I wonder if this is something Donaldson or Fleetguard would consider as an acquisition? Not for the technology (though the OG Ultra media might be worth it for Donaldson, I think Nanonet is even more advanced at this point than anything else, based on what I've seen from Fleetguard), but perhaps for the OE contracts. They already make some cans for passenger car/light truck applications, so it would be an expansion in that space with a brand people know. And Fleetguard appears to know how to make quality louvers.
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Pretty timely comment, as I just got off from a call with my Fleetguard (now Atmus) tech reps for filtration.

They are two generations of Nanonet ahead of what Cummins has released in the industrial fuel filtration space where I ply my trade. They are innovating faster than we can keep up in validating and releasing. I'm going to be updating the first-fit Fleetguard fuel filters for our products soon and the question is whether I skip one generation or two on the media side. Current filters we ship on our engines are the 2nd variant of Nanonet we've released. Atmus is up to a 4th gen and readying their 5th. It's only available through their aftermarket, though, because I can't test and validate it nearly as fast as they can get it to market (they have their own distribution and can go directly to our customers).

On media changes alone, we've gone from 500 hour to 2000+ hours of life with no loss of beta ratio.

Now, I'm on fuel filtration not lube filtration, but media is media to some extent, and my gut tells me that Nanonet lube filtration is the best on earth. But I'm quite biased. That doesn't make me wrong, though.

I suspect before any additional capacity could be useful, it would need some retooling and retraining to meet the standards Fleetguard has. Such an capacity expansion might not be profitable for a long time to come..
 
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