WILWOOD BRINGS TYPE III MILITARY-SPEC HARD ANODIZING HOME

A look into the new in-house operation

THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF HIGH-QUALITY PRODUCTS IN THE AUTOMOTIVE AFTERMARKET. With many manufacturers looking to get the upper edge with consumers, many companies have started raising the bar on materials and processes used to set their products apart from the rest. Wilwood, a name familiar in the street performance circuit and racing world, has addressed the quickly increasing standard across the aftermarket by offering a premium Type III Mil-spec hard-anodizing finish option on brake calipers, not only offering the nearly bulletproof finish on its own calipers, but also making the finish the company’s new standard, replacing Type II black anodizing on all base and powder-coat finish caliper models. To do the consumer one better, it has moved anodizing production completely in-house to its headquarters in Camarillo, California, so the company could closely scrutinize quality control. Type III Mil-spec hard anodizing isn’t a new process by any means, not even for Wilwood, but by moving the once-outsourced process into its own in-house operation, Wilwood has been able to fine-tune the process to its own strict specifications. Not only that, but not having to ship product back and forth to an outside anodizing vendor saves an astronomical amount of time, which in turn, truly benefits the end user with a much higher quality brake caliper at the same price (if not slightly lower in some cases) than the previous Type II method. In what has already been considered a success in the eyes of all those involved in the newly formed in-house anodizing process at the Wilwood facility, we wanted to reach out to those directly involved in the production line to get a firsthand take on what has been going on within Wilwood’s expanded operation. We reached out to Wilwood’s own Michael Hamrick and Phil Dunne to fill us in on what Type III Mil-spec hard anodizing is all about and what the driving forces were behind moving the production process in-house. Follow along as we take a behind-the-scenes tour of Wilwood’s anodizing facility, get an inside take on the science behind it all, and find out why and how this will benefit your truck project.