Remanufactured Valeo clutches are the result of professional remanufacturing process conducted in the Valeo plant in Amiens, France specialising in the production of O.E. clutches. It is a standard, full-quality product. In order to give the customers full information about its products, Valeo uses special labeling of them. Below we elaborate on those found on HDV and bus clutches.
Responsible management of materials
As one of the global O.E. and aftermarket producers, Valeo carries out tasks in the name of the care for the natural environment. One of the basic tasks is professional remanufacturing of parts, which can be reused. Owing to the Valeo remanufacturing process we arrive at a product equalling quality and parameters of the new clutch. To prove this, Valeo grants a two-year warranty period without the distance limit for both new and remanufactured clutches for trucks and busses.
Full information for the customer
Despite the identical quality of new and reman clutches, Valeo does its best to provide the customer with full information about the purchased product. That’s why Valeo Service uses different reference numbers for new and reman parts. This pertains to clutch sets, as well as clutch components that can be remanufactured, i.e. the pressure plate and the drive plate. Moreover, remanufactured clutch sets are labelled in TecDoc catalogues as REMANUFACTURED and are marked with the service replacement symbol, being two linked arrows – green and red one. New sets are always marked as NEW in TecDoc catalogues.
The difference is also visible when one looks at the labels of the two products. The reman one bears the symbol of service replacement, whereas the new one lacks it (see below).
Product labelling
One can tell whether the product is new of remanufactured, even if there’s no box or reference number. It’s sufficient to look at the clutch disc or pressure plate. In case of remanufactured elements, both elements bear VES logo. This is an abbreviation for “Valeo Exchange System”, i.e. the core collection system operating now in some European countries. New product doesn’t bear any logo in this place, so VES logo gives us a clear message.
Construction differences
If you’re not sure if the clutch or pressure disc bears the VES logo, you still may find out whether the product is remanufactured or new. You can tell it by the construction of the remanufactured pressure disc because you’ll find there the fulcrum ring, which is missing in the new product. The ring is used due to the mechanical processing of the pressure disc during the remanufacturing process, which changes its thickness.
After the remanufacturing process, the pressure disc also needs to be balanced. In this case we’ll always find more than one point of balancing. New product can only have one such place or may not have any – since it might not need balancing after the production process at all.
In the case of a clutch disc we should focus on looking for the VES logo. The attempts to tell whether the product is new or remanufactured by looking at the construction differences may not give 100% assurance. A remanufactured clutch disc and a new one have many things in common. They have the same new original friction surface and the same original way of mounting the friction material to the support plate. They may be equipped with the professionally remanufactured dampers (if they underwent control in the plant and were qualified for remanufacturing). It’s not certain, however, since new dampers are also used. Apart from this one should know that distinguishing between a new and remanufactured damper is very difficult and sometimes impossible.
It should be noted that clutch release bearings don’t undergo the remanufacturing process. So both, new clutch set, as well as the remanufactured one are equipped with a new clutch release bearing – this element doesn’t bear any information that would indicate whether the set itself is new or has been remanufactured.
