Features

Cometic expands V-twin reach with Delkron acquisition

Gasket manufacturer finds business climate strong

By Dave McMahon
Senior Editor

Cometic Gasket, Inc., a supplier of high performance gaskets for powersports, auto and drag racing, added to its line when it acquired fellow Ohio-based manufacturer Delkron in October. The acquisition sale allows for Cometic to enhance its offerings to the Harley-Davidson aftermarket consumer.

“It rounds out our V-twin offering,” Jason Moses, distribution manager for Cometic, said of the transaction during the Tucker Rocky Dealer Show in Frisco, Texas. “We’re doing the gaskets and we’re also doing castings and cases. It’s a complementary product. Three years ago we had acquired another company called Advanced Sleeve and we have an engine services shop. It all kind of works hand-in-hand.”

Biker’s Choice has already signed on to distribute the Delkron inner primary and transmission cases, along with other products.

“Another good sales tool on the Harley/V-twin side is the gasket board,” Moses said. “It’s a good POP and it helps the dealer control inventory.”

The Cometic gasket board is sold complete with all gaskets, seals and O-rings and the necessary clamshells, display hooks and mounting materials. Both Cometic and OE part numbers are printed on the boards for easy identification of parts.

On the metric side, the company, located northeast of Cleveland in Concord, Ohio, has converted its compete gasket kits into top end kits and bottom end kits, in an effort to reduce redundant inventories.

“You’re going to sell a top end 4-to-1 over a bottom end,” Moses agreed. “We use a lot of steel in our base gaskets. They’re rubber coated. What’s really nice is if you have to tear down again, there’s no cleanup. You wipe everything down.”

Moses has seen consumers use the head gaskets as a tuning aid.

“You can go thicker if a guy wants to run a turbo; you don’t have to change pistons — just run a little thicker head gasket. Or if the guy just needs to do a clean up cut like on a cylinder head, run a thicker head gasket to make up for whatever you’ve taken off, and you extend the service life of the product.”

Thanks to consumable products like gaskets, business is up year-to-date at Cometic.

“All indications look good for the year,” Moses said. “With our product, when the economy is good, people are buying new units and doing big bores and stuff like that. When the economy gets slow, they might not be buying new units, but they’re fixing what they own. They still want to ride.”

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