Document bBMJxY5yE64GQe1K44kOjek81

D. P. Conlon #186 - Page 2 5/23/78 lack of correlation between the Mahwah and Chrysler results on the temperature wear test and the unknown affect of running the 7163 material on the 105 test prior to the temperature wear procedure. It was also felt that Chrysler would not be positively influenced by our data but they could very easily be negatively influenced by our data: if the comparison were unfavorable, our material would never be tested by Chrysler. If the comparisons were favorable, Chrysler would not necessarily buy the material, but at least they would eval uate it. Unfortunately, at the very beginning of the meeting, Steere inter rupted my presentation to say that regardless of how favorably Chrysler might rate our material, there was no chance that the 916-4 0 material would be. used on the 1979 L-car program. Steere followed this with the statement that if the material was really exception ally good, there was some chance that Chrysler might elect to use it on the manual brake vehicles during the upcoming model year. Steere said that this chance was very slim but the pedal feel with the 7163 on a manual vehicle was not very good. Steere also stated that Chrysler would certainly evaluate any material we might wish to submit for their 1981 K-car program, but that the chances of them accepting our material for that program, were also ver remote: the Brake Engineering people were under a great deal of pressure to approve a Cycleweld material for that application. It was stated to Mr. Steere that since the April 25th meeting, Abex had expended a tremendous amount of time and'money in an effort to find a suitable replacement for 7018C on the L-car program. Mr. Steere stated that he realized this but there was no way that any new material from Abex could be adequately tested and evaluated with sufficient thoroughness to support its acceptance for production. Steere stated that because Bendix was not charging Chrysler (Kelsey-Hayes) for the full amount of tooling, Chrysler was forced to commit to buying approximately one year's worth of parts from Bendix. Again, referring to the manual brake vehicle, Steere said that if the Bendix material could not adequately do the job, and if the 916-40 was able to satisfy Chrysler's requirements, it was possible that sometime in the future the 916-40 material could be introduced on the manual' brdke vehicles. Steere said that a tremendous amount of testing remained, to be done on th3 7163 material and that because of this requirement, he did not have sufficient testing resources to evaluate the 916-40 as a candidate for immediate acceptance for production. At this point, several factors gravitated against having an argument with Steere on this point: 1. We had some serious doubts about the superiority of the 916-40. 2. If Steere really did not want our material it would be very easy for him to justify not using it (subjective noise evaluation tests, Abex reliability as a vendor, etc). 3. A knockdown - drag-out battle at this point, espcially considering the first two factors, would probably effectively eliminate SCI 02231