Panel members and guests,
This note documents the unconfirmed minutes of our teleconference yesterday afternoon. Action items were circulated earlier this morning, and they are attached in the note below.

The conference was called to order at about 1:08 pm EST by the Chairman, Wim Van Dam. Since it was expected to be a quick topic, the first order of business was the approval of an earlier motion by Jeff Clark to establish a minimum value of 140 kPa for the intake manifold pressure in the Mack T-11 test. There was no discussion of the motion offered, and the motion passed with full support from the 10 voting members present. Jeff noted that he will now issue a final revised procedure and forward it for facilitation to an ASTM Standard Test Procedure.

The remainder of the teleconference was dedicated to the issue of T-10 bearing severity.
0) Doug Jayne of Lubrizol started with a review of a report to the Panel which had issued just minutes before the start of the meeting. Skipping the blow-by-blow, Doug offered three key observations/concerns. (1) "New" bearings do appear to have higher lead levels, and they appear relatively constant. (2) Tin level appear to vary giving significant variation in lead/tin ratio. (3) Concern that lead may be alloyed with substances such as fluoride which may be reducing susceptability to corrosion.

0) Dan Lonowski of Dana reviewed the composition and production process for making these bearings, and again avoiding the blow-by-blow, one key message was that all bearings from a given batch go through the exact same flash plate bath at the same time, so they have been subjected to the same plating environment. It is possible that some differences may be due to handling after the fact, but the plating process is constant. He also noted that carbon and oxygen are typically ignored in their analyses, as they are mis-leading compared to more meaningful elements; and the baths contain a fluoro-borate, so fluorine and boron should be seen in all analyses. There was a discussion of the "light" and "dark" areas seen on the new bearing, and Dana identified these as with (dark) and without (light) a protective oil spray. There was a discussion regarding the composition of this oil resulting in an action item listed below.

The top three layers over the steel backing and bronze bearing are (1) a nickel dam about 1 micron thick. (2) the overlay material about 15 microns thick. (3) The flash plating about 1 micron thick. The final flash layer has gone through several changes over the last two years, and it is suspected (but not proven) to be the source of reduced lead severity we have seen with these new bearings. The original flash plate was 80/20% lead/tin. This was changed to 100% tin, no flash plate and 100% lead in an attempt to restore test severity, and none of these changes seem to work. Jeff Clark agreed to an action item to document all of these results with additional data as received.

Dana noted that they can change the flash plate, but they cannot change the overlay. They also noted that the three sets of bearings from SwRI, PE and LZ had different wear patterns, suggesting different operating conditions. The SwRI bearings, which had given "expected"  (BWL-152, Pb-26)results for used oil lead were worn all the way to the nickel dam. The PE bearings (BWL-222, Pb-12)had "deep" wear, but in much smaller pockets, and the LZ bearings (BWL 102, Pb-8?) showed very little wear.

Jeff Clark noted that SwRI had recently run a reference with the "old" style (batch F) bearings, and the results had been right on target.

The action items and next meeting were agreed as detained in the next note, and the meeting adjourned at 3:06 pm EST.
Respectfully submitted,
Pat       

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Fetterman, Pat 
Sent:   Tuesday, March 16, 2004 6:45 AM
To:     Aung N. Oo (E-mail); Bill Buscher (E-mail); Bill Larch (E-mail); Bob Campbell (E-mail); Charlie Passut (E-mail); Dan Pridemore; Dick Patrick (E-mail); Floyd Albert; Glen Fetterman; Glenn Mazzamaro (E-mail); Greg Shank (E-mail); James Gutzwiller; James Matasic (E-mail); Jeff Clark; Jim McGeehan; Jim Moritz (E-mail); Jim Rutherford; Jim Wells (E-mail); Joe Franklin; Ken Goshorn (E-mail); Mark Cooper; Mark Sutherland (E-mail); Matt Urbanak (E-mail); Mike Zaiontz (E-mail); Norbert Nann (E-mail); Redescal Gomez (E-mail); Riccardo Conti; Robert Mainwaring (E-mail); Ron Buck; Scott Richards (E-mail); Steve Kennedy; Tom Boschert (E-mail); Tom Franklin; Warren Totten (E-mail); Wim Van Dam

Cc:     'ken.bryda@dana.com'; 'dan.lonowski@dana.com'; 'terry.greaves@dana.com'
Subject:        Action items from March 15 telecon.

Action items -
0) Glacier Vandervel
 - additional analysis of bearings supplied by TEI.
 - document composition of flash material (1) as designed / bath composition (2) as actually tested (where possible).
 - check composition of preservative oil used on recent bearing batches. Has composition changed? Has application method      changed? Any other possible changes?

0) SwRI / PE / Lubrizol
 - check and supply any available data documenting bearing clearances or other build characteristics which might impact bearing wear variability.

0) TMC
 - document all tests detailing what has been tested incorporating input from Glacier Vandervel and using all tests whether valid or not. Not cause of invalidity on runs as appropriate. Include data on both average BWL and individual BWL to assess variability and include data on SwRI reference with "old" (batch F) bearings which hit lead target.

0) All
 - circulate data before next teleconference in time to allow panel members to analyze the data. Target data circulation for Monday, March 22.

 - Next teleconference scheduled for Wednesday March 24, 2004 at 10:00 am EST.
 - Dial-in information: (412) 380-2000, guest code 3000504#.

Regards,
Pat Fetterman
Industry Liaison Advisor
Infineum USA L.P.
Ph - (908) 474-3099
Fx - (908) 474-3363
e-mail pat.fetterman@infineum.com