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This was also a pivotal and unsettling time for the Eibach family as well. In early 1967, Heinrich passed away, but a new member of the family was born later in July, Ralph, Wilfried’s son. Many people in 1967 would have chosen to leave or at least to hide what they had in those uncertain times. It seemed as if no one was safe. The Viet Nam police action was turning into a vicious war and co-opting the energies of China, Viet Nam, America and the Soviet Union. Insurrections and rebellions were breaking out in Latin America, Africa, Indonesia and in many other areas. Wilfried could have retrenched in a defensive posture, but if you know the man, you would know that he loves a challenge and is not afraid of risk. Eibach Springs had produced only industrial springs, but in that fateful year of 1967, the company added suspension springs to their list of products. A year later the plant in Ronkhausen was expanded and a steady growth began. By 1970 there are 46 employees at Eibach, with gross sales around $1 million. A daughter, Swantje, came along on February 1, 1973, and the family was complete. Wilfried Eibach brought in Walter Korte to help them run the business in 1975. By 1980 the number of employees reaches 105 and the gross sales reaches 5 ½ million dollars. The recession of the early 1980’s causes a retrenchment throughout the business world, but Wilfried has a different perspective and plunges ahead with plans for expansion and joint ventures. In 1982 Eibach makes a bold move into the CNC Spring Coiling Technology with a strong investment into the most sophisticated machines. In 1987, Eibach expands into the United States and Eibach North America, Incorporated, becomes Eibach Springs. Two years later the Finnertrop plant is completed and begins to produce suspension related products. At the beginning of the 1990’s, Eibach has more than doubled the number of employees and tripled their gross sales.
In the 1990’s the growth continued unabated. Ralph Eibach joined his father in the company and a sales branch is added in Japan. Production plants in Germany and the United States are supported by sales offices in England, South Africa, Australia and Japan. At the new millennium, the total sales of The Eibach Group go beyond $50 million; the number of employees stands at nearly 300 in the 2 sophisticated manufacturing plants. Roger Rohrdanz and I left Orange County and traveled out to Corona, California on the 91 freeway. Just past the 15 freeway, we saw the new Eibach Springs building on our right. The address for the plant is 264 Mariah Circle. Oliver Rathlein, the Vice President of Marketing and Wilfried Eibach met us in the spacious lobby and then showed us through the plant. The total footage under roof is approximately 155,000 square feet or 3 and 1/3 acres, with outside areas for parking and promotions. The company just finished a shop tour and party for Honda, which they sponsor, that attracted 5000 guests to the plant, so they have the room to expand. The first Eibach Springs plant was located in the Irvine Spectrum, though they soon outgrew this location and moved to a bigger building near the John Wayne Airport. This plant also proved to be too small to sustain the rapid growth and in 2003 they moved to their present location in Corona. They like the town of Corona and the people and have a close working relationship with their employees. The plant in Germany is bigger, with about a quarter million square feet of covered ground and 280 employees, followed by the Corona production facility with 100 employees. Altogether the various companies and sales offices have a total of 500 employees and sales around $100 million dollars and rising. Beside their own facilities in 5 different countries, Eibach has exclusive importers, distributors and/or representatives in 80 countries around the world.
Wilfried told us that K&N and Eibach Springs lead the way in International market presence, as both companies share similar and identical networks in various countries. About Eibach in California, “We started from zero here and we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. We are a proud American Company – with a German accent. Our products are American made. In the beginning we brought Engineers from Germany over here to train others on the CNC Coiling machines. Today in Corona we are as self-sufficient as Germany,” Wilfried exclaimed. “We use the highest tensile strength materials in a special Eibach alloy, combined with the very special engineering and design parameters, topped by a superior and unique worldwide manufacturing technology, which is the core ingredients for Eibach Performance. However, the most important ingredient is the highly skilled and motivated Eibach people,” he added. It is no wonder that over the years practically every F1 Team on traditional coil springs uses Eibach. “I first became interested in the American market at the Automechanika-show in Frankfurt in 1986, where we were approached by several American companies, who wanted to be the Eibach importer for the USA. It made no sense to me to simply have importers in the United States. We need to be there in the market, developing products specifically to meet the needs of American cars. I chose Southern California to be our center because of the fine weather. When I decided to build in China, I decided on the Shanghai area, because it is very similar to the conditions that I found in Corona. My wife Nina and I love it here in Southern California and we live in our ‘second’ home in Tustin. We are blessed with a lot of wonderful friends here, in and outside of the company. There are lots of other automotive companies in the area. The high price of housing was becoming a problem, but since the decline in the housing prices, it has made it easier to attract and keep good employees. But we are not driven by cost alone. Our products are quality products and that insulates us somewhat,” he told us.
Oliver and Wilfried showed us into their research and development area and introduced us to Henry Lujan who is the chief design engineer. He showed us the computer design programs that they use. Besides high performance and racing springs and suspension systems, the company also designs and makes custom springs. They sell their suspension springs under many of their customer’s brand names and of course, under their own name. You might think you are buying another company’s springs, but chances are they were made by Eibach. “The spring kits are used to lower a car’s center of gravity,” Wilfried said and Wilfried and Rohrdanz began to talk shop. My partner, after all, is an engineer as well as a first class photographer. “The spring is the heart of the Suspension System and the shocks are actually absorbed by the springs, but a (vibration) damper is needed to control the springs,” Eibach told us. We left the design offices and walked through the research and development bay, where engineers conduct road tests on actual cars. We then entered the Damper room and from there into shipping and receiving. Springs are made from high tensile, oil-tempered wire in a special Eibach alloy; the wire rod mostly comes out of Kobe, Japan. They have many different wire dimensions in stock, thus they can always optimize the design for lowest weight, highest travel and of course always block-resistant. The raw material rolls are as tall as a normal person and weigh a ton or two each. Stacks and stacks of wire rolls filled the receiving warehouse and I was curious as to why there was so much of it. “We are a family owned business,” said Wilfried. “There is just my son Ralph and I and we are not only profit driven. We can take on projects that we like and are not necessarily wanted by other firms that have to answer to a shareholders board of directors,” he added.
Rathlein told us that they have 500 metric tons of wire in their warehouse, “enough for four months use, before it is all gone.” In the case of a disaster or strike, Eibach can continue to meet their customers’ orders for some time. Wilfried introduced us to Paul Torralbo, materials handler and assembly leader, who has been with the company for nine years. Wilfried knows all of his employees and enjoys the ability to work with his staff directly. I asked why they bought wire from Japan and not China, Brazil or India, where cheaper prices can be negotiated. “Japan produces the finest quality materials and Eibach needs to have the highest quality and highest flexibility and make our products fast. We keep a larger inventory of supplies so that we won’t have to wait if supplies are disrupted. Other companies have smaller inventories, and then order more when they receive orders for their products. It takes four months from the time that we order until the time that we receive the wire. That’s why we keep five months supply on hand,” he added. He told us that the weak dollar and the strong Euro benefited the company at least in one way, since they had manufacturing plants in both Germany and the United States. The German plant makes products for Europe, Africa, Eurasia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. The Corona manufacturing plant handles the demand for North America. The planned Shanghai plant, approximately 30,000 square feet, will eventually handle the demand for Asia. Wilfried showed us a long line of inventories; raw material, bulk finished goods and finished products.
Wilfried and Oliver led us into the manufacturing section of the plant. It is huge, spacious and clean. They only run two schedules during the summer, the night and morning shifts. By 2:30 in the afternoon the plant closes down. That seemed strange, but Wilfried knew that my question was coming and answered, “We close the plant due to the heat here in Corona and because it is environmentally wise to do so. That way we save on our cooling and energy costs. It is much cheaper to use energy at night than during the peak daylight hours. We get awards from the State of California due to our energy saving programs and it’s nicer for the employees to work when it is cooler and then go home before the rush hour,” he said. We met Tony Aguilar who was operating a large CNC winding machine. I mistakenly called it a bending machine, since it was bending the wire into springs, but they corrected me. The huge roll of wire, remember that it weighs two tons, is unrolled by the CNC machine and goes through a set of rollers about the size of your forearm. The wire, which is about the size of your small finger, is extremely hard, but the machine moves it around these rollers as if it were only a piece of silly putty. Around and around it goes, making this coil until it reaches its designed length and then a chisel like piece of metal comes down with a sound that reverberates through your brain and causes the body to jump a foot or two. The CNC machine cut a hardened steel wire half an inch thick as easily as you would snip off a thread, and the heavy spring falls with a thud into a metal bin. One after another, the huge coil is unwound and a smaller spring is magically wound, another bang, another thud and the machine continues its mastery. This machine can turn out 1500 springs a day if the need is there.
Next we saw a Sway Bar CNC Bending machine, the only one of its kind and made in Germany as it bent a six foot long straight wire about the size of a man’s thumb into a sway bar. Brandon Duquesnel was in charge of the Sway Bar Stabilizer Department and here the wire is straight and comes in exact lengths and does not have to be cut as the rolled wire does. The big machine, computer programmed, bent the wire first in one direction and then in another direction to a precision that no human hand with hammer and anvil could ever achieve. Watching the machines at work was hypnotic. Here were men and machines, with steel and hard work, creating beautiful shapes and designs. Mercedes Alarcon was stamping the name and serial numbers on finished goods. She deftly rolled the part across a pad and the inked design took shape. The huge powder coating process can be applied manually or automatically. We saw two men with a gun-like apparatus spraying a powder so light that the mist did not sink, but hovered in the air and the men had to wear masks. The powder coating ovens heated the powder coated parts to almost 500 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celsius as the parts slowly traveled through the ovens on an overhead conveyor belt. The baked on coating was extremely hard and adhered to the surface do to a process called shot peening. Besides the solid wire, the company also produces hollow tubular stabilizer bars.
A very important part of the plant is the maintenance department, headed by Terry Daigle, with his assistants Tony Nguyen and Javier Elizondo. They build and maintain the manufacturing plants equipment. Machinery doesn’t last forever and it tends to break or quit working at the worst times. It’s the maintenance mechanics who keep the equipment in good shape so that the 100 employees can do their jobs on time and on budget. Wilfried introduced us to Sonny Nguyen, who has been with the company since it was located in Irvine, sixteen years ago. Sonny works on a CNC winding machine turning out smaller springs. Next we were shown a tempering oven where the springs are heated to stress release the molecules in the metal so that they will take the coiling process. This does not affect the hardening of the wire, because the heat only reaches about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The next stop was the grinding machines, where the springs were loaded onto great round templates and placed in the machines. The grinding machines grind the tops and bottoms, or sometimes just one side, so that the springs will fit perfectly in order to avoid a side load against the springs. The Chamferring process is a deburring process where sharp pieces of metal are ground down so that the part is perfectly smooth. The dynotesting machine has four stations or compartments and the springs are spun tested. They do this on all new batches for new suppliers and for customers who want the extra precaution due to the exactness of their needs. Many a race has been lost because an inexpensive part broke and Eibach is committed to quality over cost.
The shot peening process needs some explaining. It was discovered that banging on a piece of metal does something to the realignment of the atoms and makes the metal harder and stronger. Shot peening is where tiny, very tiny steel balls are shot against the metal springs and cause small denting of the steel. The shot is like BB pellets, but much smaller and they hardly weigh anything. The finished springs look like they were given this veined look, which is strangely beautiful. Then the peened parts are powder coated and the material sticks to the slightly pitted surface and adheres with a tenacity that’s unbelievable. A paint job that stands up to the most rigorous abuse. The pits are gone and what’s left is a gorgeous finish, which Mercedes stamps with the secret code and the customer’s brand name. The springs will literally last forever in Formula 1 racing. The springs used in street rods are guaranteed for a lifetime, which roughly means a million miles. However, the Baja 500 road race and other road races have a more limited life span, because rocks and crashes injure the powder coating surface after time and cause corrosion and spring wear and it is common to replace the springs. Otherwise, with all other types of racing, high performance and street rod usage, the springs will last forever. Miles Toohey, the plant manager and Christian Sebralla, the Vice President of Operations and Engineering, stopped by to say hello and have their pictures taken. The next process was the pre-setting and this also takes some explaining. The springs are actually programmed by the computer to be cut and shaped a little longer than the shape they will take in your car. The springs are then placed in this machine to be cold shrunk, that is they are not heated up, but go in the machine as cold metal. The machine, with a lot of force, squeezes the spring into the desired size and then releases and the spring stays at that shape forever. Why doesn’t the coiled spring snap back to where it was before it was squeezed by the pre-setting machine? After all, isn’t a coiled spring supposed to squeeze together, and then go back to its original shape? It’s magic to me, but to my engineering partner at Gone Racin,’ it is only the conditioning of atoms and molecules of pre-hardened and exotic blends of steel and alloys.
The quality control department has around seven people and their job is to see that no product leaves the plant that doesn’t measure up to the quality that Eibach demands. Throughout the process of creation, each machinist and each department leader is checking on the quality of the parts they produce. But the quality control department tests and retests control batches and won’t release suspension components until they meet the standards of excellence imposed by years of research and design. At this point Wilfried waxed poetical and said, “Twenty years ago I had a great dream about ‘Eibach in America’ – now I can say: Dream accomplished.” Wilfried definitely is a romantic and loves this company. The next department was the dampering area and a young man, Andrew Kennedy, showed us how they make shock absorbers, which if you think about it, is the way you damper or reduce the tension in all those bumps in the road that you don’t seem able to avoid. Andrew actually builds shock absorbers by hand. He takes parts and puts them together, testing them as he goes along. It takes about an hour or slightly less, to make a really neat looking, high quality shock absorber, so he does 8 a day. Remember, you want really great shock absorbers on race cars, so the extra time and quality is a plus and not a minus. They work with Reeves Callaway on shock absorbers for Corvettes and Carroll Shelby for the Mustangs. Brent Boggs is the dampering engineer in charge of this small department, but Wilfried told us that they intend to expand this section considerably. A special machine, called the Damper Filling Machine was designed and built by Eibach in Germany. “These are rebuildable shock absorbers,” said Boggs, “but most people don’t know how to open them and rebuild them.” He does, though, and Eibach repairs and stands behind their products. “Eibach springs is the suspension company. We understand the entire suspension system, which we engineer, build, manufacture and sell,” said Wilfried.
“The shock absorber, springs and Multi-Pro kit will be sold worldwide and produced at the Corona, California plant. We are creating new shock and spring kits for new marques (car brands) all the time,” added Wilfried. We left the manufacturing plant and walked upstairs to the marketing and administrative rooms. Oliver Rathlein is in charge of marketing and he has divisions that handle motor sports, custom or spec, and street performance sales. The company president is Greg Cooley. Oliver showed us a slide show of the various plants and offices worldwide and told us that the Eibach Company is as much family as it is a business. The union in Germany works very close with management and there is full disclosure and a strong spirit of cooperation. The new Shanghai plant will be operation in 2009. I asked Wilfried if it was risky to invest in China. “You need someone you can trust in China. Everything in China is based on trust. I met James Fong, who I call ‘James Fong, agent 007,’ and found him to have my same values. Fong has a wire company in China and I want to enter the market. We have to convince the Chinese that motorsports will bring them a great image. Right now they don’t have that vision. They are only interested in short term profits. If we can get a small slice of the Chinese market, then we’ll be happy. Our Chinese plant will supply Japan, Australia, India and all of Asia. Twenty years ago people in Germany said to me, ‘are you crazy, they will sue you,’ when I told them I was going to build a plant for performance suspension in America. We have to take risks. If Eibach wants to maintain our current leading position worldwide as a Performance Suspension brand, we have to have a strong presence right there in the Pacific Rim! The Chinese are not just bureaucrats; they also work hard for a better living. We are lucky to have them work with us,” said Wilfried. Oliver added that, “Eibach is involved in all forms of motorsport. From NASCAR, SCORE, CORR, Touring Cars, Formula 1, World Rally Championship, Motocross and grassroots racing all around the world! It’s our spirit of the will to win that we get from motorsport that helps us stay at the forefront of quality and performance,” he concluded.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].
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