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, are 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