Vendor Newsmaker Q&A: Pete Murnen

Jan. 1, 2020
Peter T. Murnen is global marketing director, undercar and visibility products, for Federal-Mogul Corporation.
Peter T. Murnen is global marketing director, undercar and visibility products, for Federal-Mogul Corporation, with responsibility for the company’s replacement braking, chassis parts, driveline, wheel-end, wiper blade and lighting product lines. He joined Federal-Mogul through its 1998 acquisition of the automotive business of Cooper Industries, Inc., where he had managed the company’s relationship with the Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance. He was named Federal-Mogul’s group manager, friction, North America, in 1999; marketing director, braking, North America, in 2002; and global marketing director, braking, in 2004. He has helped direct several successful North American product launches, including the Wagner® ThermoQuiet®, Wagner ThermoQuiet CeramicNXT and MOOG® strut assemblies lines. Murnen is a graduate of Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.

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Why is it so important for brake distributors to have knowledge of and encourage sales of premium brake lines?

From our perspective at Federal-Mogul, one of the things that sets our premium products apart is we are an OE company. So the same engineers who are designing the OE brake pads for the Big Three, Asian and European vehicle manufacturers are working on our premium aftermarket brake lines. That’s important to consumers and it is important to us. There are a lot of new things going on within the OE sector, and we are on the leading edge of understanding what those things are and how the friction materials should work. To us, it is very important that distributors understand this and encourage the sales of premium brake lines.

A lot of manufacturers that are making mid-range brake products aren’t OE suppliers; they’re only aftermarket suppliers. They are doing the best they can, but we, as a global OE leader, have unique insight to the latest vehicle technologies and brake system operating requirements. As an example, GM is coming out with new brake pads that work on their rotors. They have treated rotors to prevent “lot rot,” which is common when vehicles sit in a lot and the rotors get rusty. The friction material we design for those rotors is different — it has a higher MU level. That is just one example of something an OE is doing and where we are on the leading edge. From a premium standpoint, we design a lot of these things into our premium Wagner ThermoQuiet and ThermoQuiet CeramicNXT brake pads.

Some of our previous OE-inspired innovations have included the Integrally Molded Insulator (IMI) and Wagner EDGE Laser Shaping Technology featured in the ThermoQuiet line. The IMI spreads noise and vibration across the entire pad, making the whole pad an insulator, or a shim. The Wagner EDGE technology is a friction-shaping solution we developed in the lab by using a laser vibrometer. It focuses caliper force in a very direct way to make the brake pads work harder and better. It also eliminates noise by tuning out hot spots within the friction and the rotor. The laser vibrometer basically takes a picture of where the hot spots are located, which leads our development of a custom shape to focus caliper force and eliminate those issues. Our new OE formulations work in conjunction with those technologies to make what was a pretty great brake pad into an even quieter, more efficient product. So it is the three technologies that really work together.

Tell me about the features of the ThermoQuiet CeramicNXT brake line.

ThermoQuiet CeramicNXT is a family of Federal-Mogul’s next-generation OE formulas, which we have brought into the aftermarket. Within our aftermarket business, we have spent a lot of time over the last couple of years marketing products that look, feel and perform better than competing products. The differentiation within ThermoQuiet CeramicNXT pads is the friction material itself. It is designed to be more forgiving than other ceramic formulas you’ll find out in marketplace. It is very even across different temperature ranges, so you know you have a good product and good stopability no matter the driving conditions. It makes a difference, and I’ll give a few examples:

If you are towing a boat and using your brakes a lot, with some brake pads you can experience a phenomenon called fade, where if they get too hot the brakes will stop working. Conversely, in the morning when you first start your car, the brakes are cold and a lot of times it’s moist, which can cause problems as well. The new CeramicNTX product is designed to work optimally in every driving situation, whether it’s high heat, low heat, when you’re stranded in traffic and keep hitting your brakes over and over again, etc. ThermoQuiet CeramicNXT is going to give you optimal braking in any condition you encounter while driving.

What do you see as some of the biggest challenges facing the market today in the friction segment?

One of the biggest challenges facing the category is the copper legislation in Washington and California and how that is going to affect the aftermarket. OE manufacturers are already addressing the move to low copper and will be prepared when copper is eliminated entirely from brake formulations. It’s not easy, however. For example, copper is used as a key abrasive ingredient in a lot of ceramic applications. Eliminating it from formulations is tough from a science standpoint because copper also helps provide characteristics that consumers, especially in the United States, really like. Consumers like a smooth braking action, and they don’t want to encounter excessive brake dust.  Additionally, manufacturers in the OE market also have to meet the requirements of the FMVSS 135 Stopping Test. This is not a requirement for the aftermarket, but as an OE manufacturer we meet this standard in our products, including those sold in the replacement market.

We are ahead of the curve on low-copper development on both the OE and aftermarket sides of our business. There are some friction manufacturers that are going to have to redesign their friction products, especially their ceramic formulations. That is a pretty big challenge.

When are we going to start seeing some of these low- or no-copper products out there?

We have already tested our new formulations and have already started to phase them in to our product lines. We’re already in production on low-copper OE brakes, and the zero-copper brakes have been designed and are in testing.

How can the enhanced www.TQBrakePads.com website help to make the jobs of technicians and suppliers easier?

There are three ways the website helps jobbers and technicians who sell premium brake pads: First, we can direct consumers where to buy ThermoQuiet brakes. We also have the ability to look up your brake pad number right from our TQ site. And we have digital animations of our premium technology. These tools really help describe the benefits of IMI and the new CeramicNXT formulations.

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