Reducing Weight on Ford’s Auto Parts is a New Priority

Carbon Fiber

Ford Motor Co and Dow Chemical Co will work to develop cost-effective ways of using carbon fiber for auto parts in cars and trucks as the No.2 U.S. automaker moves to cut vehicle weight to improve overall fuel economy.

The joint venture with Dow Automotive Systems means Ford could start using components made from advanced carbon fiber composites in its vehicle’s auto parts before the end of this decade.

Weight reduction is one way for automakers to boost the efficiency of their fleets in anticipation of rising oil prices and stricter fuel economy standards for upcoming model years.

By 2020, Ford aims to cut between 250 pounds and 750 pounds from its new cars and trucks, partly by using lighter materials in their auto parts. Shedding that weight will reduce the strain on the vehicle’s engine, allowing them more miles per gallon.

Lighter parts can also help Ford improve the range of its electric and hybrid vehicles on a single charge.

“Reducing weight will benefit the efficiency of every Ford vehicle,” said Paul Mascarenas, Ford’s chief technical officer. “However, it’s particularly critical to improving the range of plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles.”

The Obama administration said automakers would have to boost the average fuel efficiency of their cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by the 2025 model year.

Preliminary U.S. data shows that the average fuel economy for cars and trucks made for the 2011 model year was 22.8 miles per gallon. Ford’s fuel economy was 21.3 miles per gallon, according to the data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Using carbon fiber for auto parts instead of conventional steel can lower the weight of a vehicle component by up to 50 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Cutting a car’s weight by 10 percent can improve fuel economy by as much as 8 percent.

Carbon fiber is already used in race cars and products like hockey sticks, is not new to the auto industry. BMW uses the material in its M3 coupe on their hoods, fenders, and other body parts.

Yet carbon fiber’s high cost has blocked its wide-scale use. Industry experts say one way to lower the overall cost of carbon fiber is to find cheaper ways of preparing those parts.

via Chicago Tribune

Ford Focus Titanium to Receive a 6-Speed Manual Transmission

The Ford Focus sedan comes in four trim flavors, S, SE, SEL and Titanium and in keeping form with past economy car tradition, only the S and SE trims have been offered with a five-speed manual transmission, but that all changes with the 2012 Focus Titanium trim that will shortly receive a manual option.

According to a report in Car and Driver, enough Ford customers have been specifically asking for a Focus Titanium with the handling pack and the five-speed tranny that the company is going to put it out there.

On the lower trims, the manual is standard and the dual-clutch automatic adds a $1,095 to the price. While a base Focus S is priced at $16,500, Titanium models start at $22,200 for the sedan or $22,700 for the five-door. The Titanium manual option isn’t available yet on the Focus, but you should be able to see if Ford lowers the price for top-tier Focus drivers who want to do their own shifting.

via autoblog

No Scam’s, or Calls, Proven Used Auto Part’s 36 Month Guarantee is the Real Deal!!!

If you have a phone, you’ve probably been offered many chances to extend your car’s warranty. Hopefully you realized an anonymous caller from an unknown number had no idea what kind of car you drive much less when your warranty expired and promptly ended the call.

Way back in 2008, several state attorneys general teamed up to hang up on the auto warranty scammers, and the next year a federal judge ordered two companies to cease the annoying, and illegal calls.

Finally, yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission slammed the hammer down on LA-based SBN Peripherals (aka Asia Pacific Telecom, Inc.). The FTC’s report says the company made more than 2.6 billion random calls in less than 20 months. Unfortunately, 12.8 million of those calls paid off with some consumer being scammed.

For their many, many, many telephonic transgressions, the company was ordered to pay $5.3 million. The company is conveniently unable to pay that amount, of course, so the FTC is claiming more than $1 million from a Hong Kong bank account, a $357,000 lien on a house, 50% interest in a Saipan office building, interest in seven tracts of land, a 2004 Chevrolet Corvette, a 2005 BMW X5, a 2004 Dodge Durango, and a recreational vehicle.

It is sad for those effected by this scam, but have to fear!  Proven Auto Parts offers the highest quality used auto parts with a 36 Month Guarantee and Free Shipping on most items.  No annoying phone calls, or added fees.  One purchase, one great used auto part, and 36 months worry free.  It just doesn’t get any better.

You can read the full FTC report here.

via Autoblog

“Where does he get those wonderful toys?” We’re speaking, in case you didn’t catch the movie quote, of Batman. Specifically, his most famous car, otherwise known as the Batmobile. There have been well over a hundred Batmobiles since the first, a 1936 Cord, was used in 1941.

Seventy-one years later, Bruce Wayne’s number-one ride has gotten considerably more expensive to replicate. Between 1940 and 1970, Batman spent a miserly (and inflation adjusted) $32,000 for the average Batmobile. After that date? A whopping $358,000. Holy Toledo, Batman!

While some Batmobiles are completely custom designed for the Caped Crusader, others are based on more pedestrian production cars… like the Lamborghini Reventón or Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR. Indeed, over the years Batman has, among others, made use of various Chevrolet Corvette models, a Ford Mustang or two, a number of Jaguar XKE models and even a British TVR.

Centives, a economics blog, guesses that the average Batmobile set Batman back roughly $214,700. Remember, there’s been over a hundred Batmobiles in comic book land. We guess it takes a multi-billionaire playboy like Bruce Wayne to afford the crime-fighting lifestyle of an alter-ego like Batman.

via Autoblog

Honda may be out to improve the fuel economy of its powertrain by throwing extra gears into the transmission. Automobile Magazine reports the Japanese automaker is currently working to use a new nine-speed gearbox developed by ZF in its products as soon as 2014. If you’re keeping track, this is the same transmission set to debut in many Chrysler products, including the replacement for the Jeep Liberty.

Despite the additional gears, ZF says the transmission is surprisingly compact, thanks in part to the fact that it uses planetary gears in place of a traditional design. Called the 9HP, the German transmission can be used in either front- or all-wheel drive applications and handle up to 354 pound-feet of torque.

All told, ZF claims the 9HP can improve a vehicle’s fuel economy as much as 10 to 16 percent. Given the torque capacities and relatively small size, the transmission could show up in nearly everything Honda makes, but odds are the company will debut the gearbox in models like the Odyssey and Pilot as well as the Acura MDX and TL.

Used Auto Parts Not Only Help Save You Money, But The Environment As Well

Recycling is huge these days. Everywhere we go there are canisters for our glass and plastic bottles, as well as our old cans. Small contributions like this can make a big difference, but there are other items out there – bigger items – take vehicles for example. An estimated 10 million vehicles are recycled every year, giving them the title of the #1 recycled product in the U.S. 75% of the materials that make up each of those 10 million vehicles is entirely recyclable, which can translate into many different things. For ProvenAutoParts.com it is our mission to recycle those vehicles and remove the used auto parts such as engines, transmissions, alternators, starters, doors, and glass that are able to be re-used for all your auto part needs.  All our items have a 36 month guarantee, and free shipping.  Check out the infographic below and see how we are helping with the recycling effort as well providing you with the highest quality used auto parts on the internet!

via Kars 4 Kids

A brand like Mini is as much about image as it is about the vehicles it produces. Hence a seemingly endless array of branded merchandise, joined by this latest collection made in collaboration with Carmina Campus.

The fashion brand directed by Ilaria Venturini Fendi – youngest daughter of the famed fashion-design family – is distinguished by its use of recycled materials like those featured in ProvenAutoParts.com, and in the case of the Mini collection, uses all manner of discarded components from the Mini product line. Everything from seatbelts and convertible-roof canvas to scraps of metal bodywork and leather upholstery have been repurposed into a range of travel and city bags for both men and woman.

See our other Recycled and Used Auto Parts article here

Detroit automakers are creating thousands of new jobs amid a sales boom.  As they expand, their suppliers are racing to keep up, adding tons of new jobs.

At Bridgewater Interiors in Warren, Mich., for example, the pace is intense. Hundreds of union employees scurry to fill a growing list of orders. The factory floor is packed with stacks of foam cushions, seat covers and headrests.

Vice President Ron Hall, wearing safety glasses and a bright yellow vest, provides a tour. He points out a large, blinking screen overhead. It’s linked to a Ford Motor Co. truck plant. That electronic information enables Ford to tell Bridgewater exactly what kind of seats it needs for each truck moving down the auto company’s assembly line 30 miles away.

“And so we’ve got to be able to get that exact configuration and do it in a 3 1/2-hour window, and do it all in sequence,” Hall says.

This factory was not so busy just a few years ago. During the Great Recession, consumer demand fell so fast and far that people who study the industry had to go back to the World War II era to find another time when, per capita, Americans had bought so few cars.

And with two big customers, General Motors and Chrysler, going bankrupt, suppliers were “terrified,” said Sean McAlinden, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research.

“A lot of them thought they’d go down to one plant, like one heartbeat a minute,” he said.

Locking The Plant Doors

In fact, for many, the heart stopped beating. As average revenues plummeted 40 percent in a matter of months, hundreds of suppliers went bankrupt. In many cases, the companies didn’t even bother to file for bankruptcy: The owners simply sent their workers home, locked the doors and walked away.

Bridgewater Interiors was among those companies that laid off hundreds of their workers.

At another company, Michigan Automotive Compressor, the nonunion plant in Jackson, Mich., offered its employees a buyout. For those who stayed, there were no layoffs, but there were mandatory cuts in hours

“They actually allowed us to have Fridays off — for no pay,” said Darrin Dungy, who has worked at the company that workers call MACI for 11 years.

Laurie Cervantes has been there 16 years. She survived the hard times. “Just had to cut out on things that weren’t important until things got better,” she said. “We just rode out the storm.”

The outlook is much different now. Bridgewater Interiors has rehired everyone it had laid off. At MACI, workers are sometimes putting in as many as three hours of overtime a day, six days a week.

Dungy says he doesn’t hear many complaints. “Going through that spell, what I found out on my [assembly] line, is the associates are a little more thankful for what they got,” he said.

A Shortage Of Workers

In a dramatic reversal, many suppliers, after improving efficiency — through downsizing and buyouts — find themselves short-handed. At the same time, when it comes to hiring new people, “we’re trying to be very careful,” said Jerry Kurfess, head of human resources at MACI.

With the memory of the Great Recession still so fresh, companies are still wary about hiring too freely.

But McAlinden says there actually is a danger of having a shortage of parts and workers. He says the supplier industry will need 174,000 additional workers by 2015, and the pace of hiring right now appears to be too slow.

Even when suppliers intend to hire right away, it’s not easy. When all those supply companies went dark, many skilled tradesmen, machinists and engineers moved on.

Hall, of Bridgewater Interiors, suspects many potential workers are on the sidelines right now, not realizing it’s time to get back in the labor pool.

“They don’t know whether to believe the recovery is real,” he said. “We’re here living it, and we’ve been living it long enough now, for two years, that we know that it’s real.”

via NPR