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By Counterman
Like many other OEMs, the Stellantis family of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and RAM (CDJR) vehicles uses a variety of sales codes to identify major and minor options. Unfortunately, these sales codes aren’t as readily accessible to the independent technician or the aftermarket professional as the codes used by other manufacturers.
The VIN decal found in the doorjamb of most modern CDJR vehicles only includes paint, interior trim, GVWR and tire information. Unlike GM and VW/Audi, there is no options tag in the glovebox or trunk area advertising these option codes. Breaking CDJR codes has traditionally required a call to your local dealer.
Veteran parts specialists will remember the SBA, SBB or SBC options found in the steering category for many Mopar products from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the difficulty in actually finding those codes without the assistance of their local dealer. Most of us have run across choices between 136- or 160-amp alternators, and many parts specialists have realized that modern CDJR paint codes almost always start with a “P.”
In the past few years, there has been an increased use of “BRx” sales codes to identify CDJR brake packages in our aftermarket catalogs. In place of physical descriptions like “12-inch vented rotor” or “dual-piston caliper,” we’re left with a jumble of codes such as BR1, BRF, BRY, etc. This coincided with the 2014 formation of FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), the manufacturer of CDJR vehicles prior to its merger into Stellantis. Catalog information derived from FCA sources resulted in this proliferation of “BR” codes.
To make things even more difficult, many of these codes appear across multiple CDJR platforms, and each code may translate to different specifications depending on the vehicle being catalogued. Using a variety of catalog descriptions, approximate measurements and OEM sales codes, the following information collects these descriptors into one location. Included here are many of the most common confusing applications, with some identifying characteristics that can be determined “in the field:”
CHRYSLER 200, 2015-2017
BRF (13” front rotors)
BR1 and BRG (12” front rotors)
CHRYSLER Town & Country, DODGE Grand Caravan, 2015-2020
BRE (11.89” front rotor w/single-piston front caliper,
12” rear rotor)
BR1, BR3, BRG (13” front rotor w/dual-piston caliper,
12.9” rear rotor)
Chrysler 300, DODGE Challenger/Charger, 2015-present
BR3 (12.6” rotors, vented front, solid rear)
BR4 (Brembo four-piston fixed front caliper)
BR5, BR6 (13.6” front rotor, 12.6” vented rear)
BR7 (Brembo six-piston fixed front caliper)
BR9 (14.5” front rotor, 13.75” vented rear, police package Charger only)
Dodge Durango, Jeep Grand Cherokee 2015-present
BR2,BR3,BR6, BR8 (13.78” front rotor, 13” vented rear)
BR4 (SRT with Brembo calipers)
BRY (13” vented front rotor, 13” solid rear rotor)
Jeep Cherokee, 2014-present
BR1 (single-piston front caliper, 13” vented rear rotor)
BR3 (dual-piston front caliper, 13” vented rear rotor)
BR6, BRG (dual-piston front caliper, 12.6” solid
rear rotor)
BRF (single-piston front caliper, 11” solid rear rotor)
Jeep Compass, 2017-present
In 2017, the MK platform (“old body”) featured 11.57” front rotors, and either 10.3” or 11.9” rear rotors. The new MP platform Compass features 12” front rotors, and 10.95” rear rotors.
Jeep Wrangler JK, 2018 (“old body”)
BR6 (13” front rotor)
BRW (11.9” front rotor)
Jeep Wrangler JL, 2018-present
BR2, BR6 (13” diameter, 1.1” thick front rotor, 13.46” solid rear rotor)
BR3 (13” diameter, 1.1” thick front rotor, 13.78” vented rear rotor)
BRY (13” diameter, 0 .945” thick front rotor, 13” solid rear rotor)
RAM 1500, 2019-present
The DS platform RAM 1500 “Classic” features the previous five-lug wheel, while the new-for-2019 DT platform RAM 1500 features six-lug wheels.
When a customer comes to our counter, they’ve usually chosen us based on our reputation for providing convenient service and the correct parts. If we repeatedly fail to meet their expectations, or make a habit of telling them to look elsewhere for the information we need, eventually someone else will capture their business. In the case of these brake codes, your choices are to use all the resources at your disposal to figure out the correct parts, or send them to the local dealer so they can fetch the information that matches your electronic catalog. Once they leave your store, there’s a chance they won’t be back.
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By Counterman
I get “flop sweats” when I panic. One of my worst cases was when working the front counter at a tire dealer. We had just inspected a Ford Taurus with a broken passenger-side spring and about 75,000 miles on the clock. The customer dropped off the car in the morning complaining of a knocking noise and notchy steering.
I was on the phone with the customer at 9:30, getting approval on the recommended work. The estimate I wrote was for four struts, two springs and front upper strut mounts. I spent extra time finding parts, looking up labor times and calculating the out-the-door price.
Then the customer asked, “Is there a less expensive option?” That’s when the flop sweats started. It got worse after he asked, “Can I get away with just replacing the fronts?”
I quickly pulled out my calculator and rewrote the estimate on the fly for just the front struts, springs and upper mounts. After giving him the price, he asked if it would be half that price if he did only one side. My manager could see the sweat on my face and tapped me on the shoulder. “Tell the customer you will call him back in 10 minutes with an accurate estimate because you need to talk to the technician.”
He told me that the only way the shop would do the job was to do it the right way. He explained that if we did just the front struts, it would make the vehicle unstable. Replacing only one strut would make the car unsafe and impossible to align. He said the customer would be unsatisfied if we did not do both front and rear struts. He might complain about a steering pull tomorrow, uneven tire wear in a month or that he could not control the vehicle.
“If the customer does not buy something from us today, we will not go out of business. But, if they buy something unsafe, it could put us out of business.”
Looking back, I was more concerned about the customer walking out of the shop without buying anything than doing the job the right way to make the vehicle functional and safe. I was looking for approval for my ego and not approval for a sound repair.
All or Nothing
Shocks, struts and springs do not operate independently. The condition of one corner of the suspension affects all the corners of the vehicle when driving straight or cornering. At low speeds, it might not be as noticeable, but it still happens. At higher speeds and cornering forces, the inability to control the movement of the suspension and body in one corner can change the contact patch for all the corners. During a panic situation, an unbalanced suspension with worn ride control can alter the contact patch to the point where the vehicle oversteers, understeers or can’t stop.
The stability-control system measures the effectiveness of its correction in real time. How effective the correction is depends on the condition of the contact patch of the tires. What influences the health of this contact patch is the tire’s condition (construction, traction and even inflation) and the condition of the chassis components like the struts.
The computer does not assign a value to the condition of the contact patch and there are no parameters (PIDs) in the programming for most systems. The corrections and the effectiveness are measured by the sensors in a high-speed feedback loop.
A stability-control system will never set a malfunction light if the condition of the contact patch crosses a set threshold. But, as the condition of the chassis and tires diminishes, the corrections become less effective and more actions will be needed to bring a vehicle under control.
These stability-control sensors are essentially blind to the condition of the state of the ride control and suspension. The software and sensors can’t diagnose a strut that has lost its gas charge or if a spring is weak. It just sees the results as data coming from the sensors. To the algorithms in the software, it could be a patch of ice or an over-loaded car. But, the reality is that it could be a worn out strut and a spring with a missing coil.
Basically, if the suspension is not up to snuff, the correction by the system will take longer. This results in longer stopping distances or, in some cases, the vehicle ending up on its roof.
For example, the most basic stability and ABS correction is a panic stop in a straight line. When the driver mashes the brake pedal, weight transfers to the front tires, loads the front suspension and causes the springs to compress. How much the springs compress is influenced directly by the condition of the shocks or struts. When the springs compress, the contact patch of the tires changes due to the weight and geometry of the suspension.
The rear suspension is even more interesting. When the weight loads the front tires, the rear spring expands, which makes the contact patch of the rear tire smaller. If the shock or strut is unable to control the rebound of the spring, additional weight is transferred to the front, which nosedives even more.
Applied to the front counter at your shop, it means that you should never sell just one strut, shock or spring. Also, you should be very careful selling just front or rear ride-control units. This approach might get the customer back on the road, but not in a safe vehicle.
So, what did the customer do with his Taurus? After calming down and wiping the sweat from my brow, I explained why we recommended replacing all four struts. He finally understood and decided to replace all four struts and both front springs.
The moral of the story: Stand by your recommendations. You’re not doing your customers any favors by recommending a less expensive part or repair.
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By Counterman
Warranty returns are the bane of every parts retailer’s existence. But, the headache of processing a warranty return is just the tip of the iceberg when you consider the overall scope of the problem for the automotive aftermarket.
The Automotive Aftermarket Warranty Committee estimates that warranty abuse costs auto parts manufacturers and distributors more than $600 million each year, although members are confident that the actual number likely is much higher. Those costs stem from a number of expenses that are set in motion by a return, including manually processing credits; reverse logistics and transportation; repackaging products; and additional quality-control testing to rule out major defects in materials.
To be sure, returns are a thorn in the side for all retailers. A 2018 Appriss Retail study concluded that return fraud and abuse cost U.S. retailers across all sectors nearly $24 billion each year.
Unfortunately, the auto parts sector holds the dubious distinction of having the highest return rate of any retail category in the Appriss Retail study – with nearly one in four auto parts (22.6%) returned. The next highest return rate is in the apparel segment, at 12.78%, followed by department stores at 12.52%.
In a recent analysis with one of its large retail partners, KYB determined that 53% of all warranty returns were either brand-new parts that never had been installed on the vehicle, or they were parts from another manufacturer (a competitor’s version or the OE part).
“So with over half the parts that were sent back as warranty returns, it was very, very quickly determined that they were not legitimate warranties,” explained Aaron Shaffer, director of marketing for KYB Americas Corp. and a member of the Automotive Aftermarket Warranty Committee.
According to the council, these are among the most common types of warranty abuse in the auto parts sector:
• Improper diagnosis – A customer returns a perfectly good part because it didn’t fix the vehicle issue (also known as “throwing parts at the problem”).
• Part damaged during installation – A customer returns a functioning part because it was damaged during installation, often because the customer didn’t follow the recommended installation procedures.
• Wrong manufacturer – A customer returns a part from “Manufacturer A” in the box purchased via “Manufacturer B” within the allowable return period.
• OE return – A customer returns a replaced OE part in the box as a warranty aftermarket part. “We see it a lot in our category,” Shaffer said. “People buy a new set of shocks, they put them on, put the old OE shocks back in the KYB box, tape it up, take it to the store and say it’s a warranty return. And the store gives them a credit.”
• Fraud – A customer attempts to return a high-dollar part purchase with unrelated objects in the box. For example, a “return” of an A/C compressor or turbocharger actually contains rocks or used brake pads in the box.
What’s exasperating for parts manufacturers and distributors is the fact that just about every type of warranty abuse mentioned here likely could be prevented if the counter person simply opens the box to verify if the customer is returning what they say they’re returning. If the product matches expectations, and it’s within the correct packaging for the appropriate manufacturer, only then should the part be processed as a legitimate warranty claim.
And that’s exactly the line of thinking behind the Automotive Aftermarket Warranty Committee’s “Check the Part” campaign.
Members of the group include representatives from KYB, Dorman Products, FDP Brakes, Motorcar Parts of America, MotoRad and Standard Motor Products. The group developed the “Check the Part” campaign to hit home with counter professionals, who are on the front lines of processing parts returns and weeding out warranty abuse. The campaign’s messaging is simple:
√ Open the box
√ Inspect the part
√ Verify the return
Members of the group, who spoke with AMN/Counterman on a recent conference call, emphasize that they’re not pushing for parts sellers to adopt new warranty policies. They’re simply encouraging them to enforce the return policies that are already in place – an area in which the aftermarket seems to lag behind most other retail categories.
“You can’t walk into an Apple store with an iPhone that was run over by a car and say, ‘This thing is bad,’” asserted David Tobin, director of strategy for Motorcar Parts of America (MPA). “They’re going to laugh at you and say, ‘Yeah, that’s because you ran over it with a car. Would you like to buy another iPhone?’ But in automotive, we just don’t do that.”
“What we’re suggesting is not a new practice,” Shaffer added. “It’s a practice that’s employed by every industry except ours, and it’s costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s just time to stop.”
The “Check the Part” campaign is in the early innings, and the group is still trying to determine the most effective strategies for getting its message out. (The Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association and the Auto Care Association have endorsed the initiative.) A similar campaign conducted by one of its members gives the group hope that “Check the Part” could make a real difference.
In 2018, Dorman distributed mouse pads – imprinted with tips for processing warranty returns – to 350 stores operated by one of its large retailer partners. After a year, the retailer saw a 5% reduction in total warranties in those 350 stores, according to Michael Campana, senior manager for quality engineering at Dorman. Additional efforts to raise awareness in those stores have yielded further reductions in warranty returns, particularly in the category of parts that were never installed.
“That was one of the examples that we brought to this committee that led to discussions of working together to make this an industry-wide initiative, rather than all of us separately trying to do initiatives likes this,” Campana adds.
link hidden, please login to view Warranty abuse in the automotive aftermarket isn’t a new problem. But when it comes to addressing it, the stakes are higher than ever. In today’s environment, parts sellers and distributors are under increasing pressure to improve margins; maintain high levels of service and customer satisfaction; find and deliver the right part at the right time; and keep stores staffed and delivery vehicles on the road.
“Correctly handling warranty claims is a good way to improve sales,” the Automotive Aftermarket Warranty Committee asserts in a fact sheet supporting the “Check the Part” campaign. “By managing the returns better, we can also reduce the number of holes in our plan-o-grams, maintain the integrity of our store inventory and improve the store’s P&L.”
Manufacturers on the conference call said it sometimes feels like their quality and engineering teams devote a disproportionate amount of time to parts returns. You can imagine their frustration when you consider that one of MPA’s most returned parts is a starter for 1970s-era Ford pickups, according to Tobin. While the starter has a lifetime warranty, who’s to say that the starter is the root of the problem on a decades-old truck?
“If you think about a Ford truck from the ‘70s, the battery has a problem, the cables have a problem, the relays have a problem – everything has a problem in that truck,” Tobin lamented. “We’re spending resources on the wrong side of the curve because people are just swapping stuff out because they’re not properly diagnosing the problem.”
In an email, the group asked to convey this message to AMN/Counterman readers: “Warranty returns affect all of us. If there is one small thing you could start doing today to help your company and the entire industry, it would be simply opening the box and verifying
each return.”
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By Garage Gurus
For more insider auto repair tips that can save you time in the garage, visit Garage Gurus
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