Never give a sucker an even brake? Shoddy Chinese pads fill standards vacuum

TORONTO — The next time you step on the brake pedal of your car or truck, consider this: Do you know who made your brake pads?
There are no mandatory Canadian standards for replacement brake pads, and “it’s a huge problem, because what’s happening is that we’re getting huge amounts of Chinese product dumped into Canada,” declares Rick Jamieson, chief executive of ABS Friction Corp., a pad maker in Guelph, Ont.

Amid worries about Chinese-sourced lead in toys, melamine in dog food and poison in toothpaste, and while governments blame crashes on cellphone use, “maybe it’s the brake pads the guy’s got on his car that aren’t stopping fast enough,” Jamieson says.
ABS has its own research centre which has tested competitive products, and “the stuff coming into Canada, much of it isn’t safe, and no one has any concern about it,” he asserts.
“We have standards on auto glass that you can replace in a windshield, but we don’t have standards on what stops the car.”
There are mandatory requirements for original-equipment brake systems, as well as for aftermarket pads in Europe. In Canada, except for heavy-truck parts, there is only a “self-certification program” for makers and importers of replacement pads.
Voluntary standards exist, notably BEEP — Brake Effectiveness Evaluation Procedure — which can provide assurance to consumers.
However, “it’s industry-driven,” observes Denis Laporte, a spokesman for the Standards Council of Canada, a Crown corporation which reports to the federal Industry Minister.
“There is no mandatory requirement to go through a testing lab, for example like an electrical product.”
Transport Canada spokesman Eric Collard confirmed that “we don’t regulate any aftermarket vehicle-related products under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act,” aside from child seats and tires.
“What we found was really scary,” says Ray Arbesman, chairman of Nucap Industries Inc., a Toronto maker of steel backing plates that hold brake-pad friction materials.
In testing of at Nucap’s research and development centre, “out of every 1,000 pads that we checked, there’s at least five or six or seven pads that completely separated from the steel,” Arbesman said.
Some ignited, and “what we found in friction materials was scary,” Arbesman said, adding that brakes have become the leading cause of car fires.
Imports from China and elsewhere look as good as North American-made pads, he said, “but what’s inside, nobody knows.”
At BEEP-certified ABS Friction, “I export 95 per cent of my goods,” says Jamieson, while “a disproportionate amount of brake pads in Canada are Chinese product — really cheap Chinese product.”
Some “aren’t even labelled to country of origin,” he says, urging that the BEEP minimum be required for all pads sold in Canada.
He hasn’t seen outright counterfeits — shoddy pads with fake brand-name packaging. But “cheap imports ultimately result in a lot of car accidents that people don’t realize were caused by the brake pads,” Jamieson says.
“I’m not saying that every part that comes from China is bad. But there’s five factories that we know are safe in China; there’s 400 making it over there.”
Sun Jinhuan, a spokeswoman in the Chinese consulate’s commercial office, observes that “inevitably there are some products of inferior quality; that is the fact.”
She adds: “If you pay more, you can get good quality.”
In simulated panic stops on ABS Friction’s dynamometer, Jamieson says, some pads “self-destruct — the brake pad will literally break down, just break into pieces.”
Many contain undisclosed asbestos, he adds, endangering the health of mechanics and generating carcinogenic dust into the environment as they wear.
“The market is full of cheap pads,” says Vaughn Tanaka, proprietor of an independent garage in Toronto.
“You don’t fool around — just put in the top-of-the line pad that you can get.”
Safety concerns aside, Tanaka says, “if you put an inferior pad on, usually they’ll wear quicker and make a lot of noise.”
But for many drivers and installers, “there’s been a rush toward low, low price,” says ABS Friction’s Jamieson — adding that motorists typically don’t save much, with the profit from substituting a cut-price product going to the garage operator or the garage’s supplier.
“You have a blind leap of faith, when you put your foot on the pedal, that the pads your mechanic put on your car are able to do the job.”