March
18, 2003 17:14 ET
Gage
Products Provides Custom Test Fuels and
Service That Automotive Clients Rely On
FERNDALE,
Mich., March 18 /PRNewswire/ -- More than, 115 fuel-pump prototypes
manufactured by Robert Bosch GmbH were doing their job: running
endlessly for thousands of hours.
Lined
up in a garage at Detroit Testing Laboratory Inc., the slightly
differentiated automotive-fuel pumps were operating continuously
day and night. They were running on 13 different, meticulously
prepared custom-fuel formulations.
They
ran continuously as the lab conducted durability trials to
give Bosch engineers information about what kind of pump would
last the longest under real-world conditions.
Two
things were crucial to make the test a success. The first
was to have enough of each of the slightly different fuels
on hand when needed without forcing Detroit Testing Laboratory
to become a warehouse for many barrels of limited-purpose
gasoline blends. It was equally important that every single
batch of each fuel type had to be precisely the same as the
one before.
“Our
tests may run up to 2,000, 4,000 or even 10,000 hours, but
you don’t want your test fuel to change over time; that’s
critical,” declares John Saad, supervisor of Detroit Testing’s
fuel-components lab in Centerline, Michigan. “And it doesn’t.”
Saad
is totally confident in the uniformity of the test-fuel formulations
used by his lab because most of them are supplied by Gage
Products Company, a $45-million firm headquartered in the
Detroit suburb of Ferndale. Gage Products which has been manufacturing
paint-related products and cleaners for a wide variety of
industrial uses for 67 years, is carving out a growing role
in supplying custom-blended fuels for product development
and for quality and emissions-control testing by automotive
OEMs and their suppliers.
The company currently offers more than 25 different calibration
fluids needed to meet testing requirements for a variety of
automotive products, including oil and fuel pumps, fuel injectors
and transmissions. Its customers include Visteon, DaimlerChrysler,
Ford, Delphi, TI Automotive, Bosch and Federal Mogul. Gage
has provided these companies and others with more than 1,000
different blends of gasoline for automotive-test uses over
the last five years.
So
far, custom-blended test fuels have amounted to about $1-million
in annual business for Gage. Gage expects to more than double its sales of automotive
test fuels in the next two years and says an annual sales
goal of $3 million to $5 million for test fuels is realistic
in the next several years.
To
set the stage for this expansion, Gage has re-organized its
refining services group, established a customer service team,
increased laboratory staffing and invested in new laboratory
and fuel-testing equipment.
Tom Murray, recently named group manager of Gage’s Refining
Services Division, is heading the company’s test-fuels expansion
efforts.
Expanding
the test-fuels business capitalizes on a number of Gage corporate
advantages, including a technically expert staff and a Detroit-area
location that can meet the increasingly demanding delivery
needs of automotive manufacturers and suppliers. Today, Gage
is the auto industry’s only Michigan-based supplier of custom-blended
gasoline fuels and calibration fluids.
The
company began supplying custom-blended fluids to the auto
industry more than two decades ago. To help automakers test
carburetors that produce the mix of fuel vapor and air to
power an engine, Gage developed calibration fluids with specific
variations of measures such as viscosity, specific gravity
and flow characteristics. “They are similar to gasoline,”
Murray explains, “but they have a narrow range of properties
which helps in testing because fuel variance won’t be a factor
in the test results.”
Today, fuel-injectors have replaced carburetors in most vehicles,
reducing the demand for calibration fluids. But there are
other needs for custom-blended test fuels and fluids. Every
new engine has demanding certification requirements. Bulk
fuels can’t be used for the precise analyses that must be
made in testing fuel-system components, where variables such
as differences in types, gauges and shapes of materials and
how systems are put together can result in huge disparities
in the performance of a component or system.
“You
need exact repeatability with your fuel in order to be sure
a test failure is due to component design and not fuel variance”,
Murray Explains. “We’re a small custom refinery, and we blend
these fuels to meet exact specifications that give our customers
the required batch-to-batch repeatability. This unique ability
to custom blend fuels to meet a wide variety of specifications
is a core competency that differentiates Gage from others
in this business.
“Crude
oil streams have a great deal of variance depending on their
source. In turn, the gasolines produced from these crude stocks
also have a lot of natural variation from pump to pump.”
Murray
adds that “the only way to get repeatability in the production
of these test fuels is to blend individual components to exact
formula requirements.”
Gage
can deliver this type of repeatability because its manufacturing
and refining processes are designed for small batches that
meet extremely tight tolerances.
“Big
oil companies with their massive refining capacity aren’t
interested in supplying small amounts of customized fuel,”
according to Murray. “Custom fuel is not the focus of their
business.”
Other
significant trends in the auto industry also are adding to
the demand for Gage fuels. The mechanics of oil-pump and brake-system
prototypes, for example, must be thoroughly tested to meet
automakers’ increasing demands for production quality and
actual performance improvements. The increasing market share
of plastic fuel tanks and fuel-system components now calls
for a new wave of testing as OEMs carefully re-evaluate their
traditional reliance on metal tanks and parts.
Globalization
also is adding to demand for test fuels, as OEMs adjust their
hardware for the various qualities and types of gasolines
used around the world. China, for example, uses relatively
unrefined gasoline compared with the U.S. market, according
to Murray. But most of the Big Three’s development work on engines
for international markets is done in the United States, which
creates demand here for specialized test fuels.
The
major push for cleaner-burning engines also is adding to Gage’s
work, Murray says. From the very tough upcoming emissions standards
in California and the rising concern about global warming,
there is tremendous pressure on automakers to improve. There’s
more work with gasoline alternatives such as ethanol and additives
such as MTBE that are intended to make gasoline burn more
cleanly.
“The
engine manufacturers are on one side and the oil companies
are on the other side, with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency in the middle, and they’re all having a big debate
about who’s to blame for tailpipe emissions. But the bottom
line is that everyone has to scramble now and do whatever
they can to improve the situation, and fast”, Murray adds.
The
growing popularity of a new generation of diesel fuels and
systems, called “clean diesel,” also is creating demand for
Gage’s fuels, particularly in Europe. The company ships products
from its Michigan facilities and also contracts some manufacturing
to companies on Europe.
Gage
maintains an inventory of more than 250 custom-blended gasoline
fuels for use in automotive test programs. Custom fuels generally
cost an average of $9 to $18 a gallon but can cost as much
as $250 per gallon, depending on the complexity of the blending
process. Gage also provides certification of the fuel recipe
so that clients know exactly what’s contained in the blend.
The
company has found that a major value they add to their custom-blending
business is helping customers in both independent test labs
and OEM engineering departments understand exactly what fuels
are require for their tests. “We’ve developed a whole library
of specifications,” says Murray. “A lot of people aren’t
certain what they need. Or they may know the fuel’s name,
but not know its specifications.”
Another
key competency for Gage is the ability to deliver quickly,
almost always within five days – and sometimes much quicker.
“The old adage ‘time means money’ really applies to this business,”
Murray notes. “ Once a test-fuel need is established, our
customer wants the fuel as quickly as possible”. The company’s
geographic location in metro Detroit is a major advantage,
compared with competitors in the oil-and-gas country of Oklahoma
and Texas.
An
unexpected need for four barrels of a custom blend in early
January gave a senior technician at TI Automotive a renewed
appreciation for Gage’s ability to ship products called Reference
Fuel C on an expedited basis. Keith Roggenbuck says that over
the holidays his company ran out of a particular type of fuel
used in testing fuel-system components.
“We
were in a pickle,” Roggenbuck recalls. “We called Gage Products
on a Friday and had our test fuel four days later. It’s great
to have them close by, because we often run into time issues
when we try to obtain fuels from Texas.”’
There’s
more to the quality of Gage’s service as well, according to
Roggenbuck. “They really go out of their way to provide quality
service,” he says.
Detroit
Testing Laboratory’s Saad notes that the consistent quality
of Gage’s products has made the company his A-1 supplier.
“We really have to stay on top of things,” he explains. “Often
we have clients who want to come up with their own blend,
and Gage is the best in the business at helping them – and
us – figure out what we need and then delivering it.”
Like
so many other things in the business world, accountability
is vital for Gage’s clients Saad says, “whenever something
goes wrong in a test, the first thing our customer is going
to check is a certificate of analysis and a sample of the
fuel. When we’re dealing with Gage, we know that a problem
with the blend is the first possibility that we can cross
off our list.”
Source:
Gage Products Company
CONTACT:
Company Contact: Tom Murray of Gage Products Company, Phone: 248-691-6737, Email: tmurray@gageproducts.com; or Media Contact: Larry Weis
of AutoCom Associates, +1-248-647-8621, E-Mail: lweis@usautocom.com
, for Gage
Products Company
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