Serving the Automotive Electric Aftermarket since 1930

Lester Catalog was began in the 1930’s by Harry Lester. At that time he found that he needed an application catalog to sell generator and starter armatures that were produced by his company, Champion Armature in Los Angeles. Together with Fred Barton, they developed the first application catalog for this type of product.

In 1941, Harry co-founded the Automotive Parts Rebuilders Association with a group of his peers. Because of his many industry contacts, the catalog that Harry and Fred first produced for armatures, became widely used by other armature rewinders. At this early date their catalog was already becoming an industry standard.

The last catalog that they produced for armatures was published in 1942. Many companies were now rebuilding generators and starters for sale on an exchange basis. A new industry of remanufacturing was emerging. Through the following decades Lester catalog produced catalogs for alternators, generators, starters, armatures, rotors, voltage regulators, water pumps, carburetors, clutches, smog pumps, distributors and brakes.

In the 1960’s Lester Catalog was acquired by the Klapper family, who owned several remanufacturing related businesses in the Los Angeles area. They continued to produce Lester Catalogs until 1997 when control of the Lester system was acquired by Rebuilder Services, Inc., our parent company.

Due to the decline in remanufacturing of some of the product lines, we now focus strictly on alternators and starters and their related components. In addition to application catalogs we now publish specifications, interchanges, photo guides, bills of material and more.

The Lester Catalog system has been embraced by all sections of the remanufacturing industry, including remanufacturers, auto electricians, parts suppliers and retailers. We provide data in both printed and electronic formats. We support AAIA data structure and produce many custom publications for manufacturing and marketing functions.