Accrued Warranty Costs

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2012

Accrued Warranty Costs —

The Company warrants its various products over differing periods depending upon the type of product and application. Consequently, the Company records warranty liabilities for the estimated costs that may be incurred under its basic warranty based on past trends of actual warranty claims compared to the actual sales levels to which those claims apply. These liabilities are accrued at the time the sales of the products are recorded.

In addition to its normal warranty liability, the Company, from time to time in the normal course of business, incurs costs to repair or replace defective products with a specific customer or group of customers. The Company refers to these as field recalls and in these instances, the Company records a specific provision for the expected costs it will incur to repair or replace these products utilizing information from customers and internal information regarding the specific cost of materials and labor. Due to the sporadic and infrequent nature of field recalls, and the potential for a range of costs associated with field recalls, the Company cannot accurately estimate these costs at the time the products are sold. Therefore, these costs are recorded at the time information becomes known to the Company. As the field recalls are carried out, the Company relieves the specific liability related to that field recall. These specific field recall liabilities are reviewed on a quarterly basis.

The following table presents the changes in the Company's accrued warranty liability:



	Nine months ended September 30,
	2012			2011
Balance, beginning of period	$	29,863		$	28,183
Payments	(11,564		)	(12,078		)
Accruals for warranties	6,768			9,406
Currency impact	(92		)	503
Balance, end of period	$	24,975		$	26,014