Talk:Raybestos

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Raybestos is far more than a brand of brakes. In addition to brakes, the company manufactured clutch plates for automotive, commercial truck, and off-highway transmissions, resin-based products such as helmets, bowling balls, and adhesives, and even insulation products for NASA. The brake company was actually spun off from Raybestos years ago, while the clutch manufacturing continued under the names Raybestos Products Company, Raybestos Powertrain, and Allomatic, with Raytech Corporation as the parent company. In 1996, Raytech bought one of their competitors, Advanced Friction Materials, adding transmission bands and bonded torque converter covers to the product line.

Years of manufacturing asbestos-based brake and clutch linings caught up to Raybestos, resulting in asbestos litigants eventually owning the company. After failing to turn around the company and make it profitable, the asbestos trust sold the company. The dry friction divisions in Germany and China were sold to Schaeffler Group, while the wet friction divisions were sold to Sun Capital Partners. Sun Capital split the divisions into Friction Holdings, selling OEM products, and Powertrain Holdings, selling to the aftermarket. Friction Holdings announced in December 2008 that it would cease operations by February 28, 2009.

A good source for the history of Raybestos from 1902 to 2002 can be found in the 100-year anniversary brochure at. Perhaps someone who's a better writer than I am could use this information to expand the article.

Friction Dude (talk) 04:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Another proud US company sold off
This company defined automotive friction materials for the last 100 years. Raybestos has been broken up by ambulance chasing lawyers chiseling one another for a fraction of a percentage point. In doing so, these wing tip brogue wearing hairballs have left less and less for the purported asbestos victims.

Don't worry... the box still says Raybestos. It just takes a little longer to get the stuff from China or some other Asian $hithole.

An American tragedy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.23.83.206 (talk) 10:15, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Those ambulance chasing lawyers never made next to nothing. The company has paid out 1-2% of all claims. The company left so much toxic waste lying around, that the cancer type illness rate is nearly double the rest of the state. My wife has had reoccurring brain tumors her entire life because of this. He body is saturated with PCB's and other chemicals. We await the next tumor showing up. We're averaging one every 2-3 years. And we never got a dime. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.194.125.128 (talk) 05:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)