Dayco’s National Sales Manager Steve Carolan is back to emphasise the company’s focus on its three key priorities.
Whatever the product group, motor factors have three priorities when supplying their workshop customers – quality, range and availability.
Modern cooling systems play a crucial part in the drive towards reducing fuel consumption. The demands for increased efficiency, together with factors such as higher flow rates, turbocharger technology, autonomous heating and air conditioning, have transformed the traditional process of engine cooling into complex cooling systems.
Future emissions regulations will require engines to operate at 10% higher temperatures in order to ensure optimal fuel combustion. This will require more powerful cooling systems in order for the vehicle to run efficiently for its entire lifespan.
The role of the thermostat is to effectively control the flow of coolant around the cooling system and allow the engine to reach its optimum working temperature as quickly as possible. Dayco thermostats are designed to efficiently accomplish this objective for all engine types, while also satisfying three key requirements: reduced fuel consumption, emissions, and wear and tear.
Quality
At Dayco, we regard ourselves as a leading manufacturer of precision engineered automotive products with a track record of innovation. The list of our OE supply partners is extensive, so quality is a necessity. As an OESAA member, this commitment to quality also extends to our aftermarket programme.
Our growing aftermarket product range includes thermostats, which, in keeping with our ongoing commitment to quality, are naturally designed and manufactured to meet the most stringent OE specifications. The automated control processes on the dedicated VW thermostat production line ably demonstrate the case in point.
Range
Dayco also has a track record for identifying first-to-market products to provide factors with a competitive advantage and to include a strategy of growth, as well as a plan of execution. Therefore, our comprehensive market offering is a given.
Unlike many replacement products, a broad range of applications are covered with a relatively small number of our part numbers, which means that carrying a certain amount of stock will not put proactive factors that invest in this way at a disadvantage. For example, Dayco part number DT1050V, a traditional valve style thermostat, fits more than 1.3 million Ford applications in various guises and has an annual UK potential of close to 44,000 units, using industry figures for rates of failure.
Availability
Naturally, availability is also of key importance. With our Midlands-based UK distribution centre and our offer of next-day delivery countrywide, this is another vital area that we have covered.
Huge potential
As well as emphasising our focus on these three key priorities, we want to ensure that our motor factor customers understand the market potential offered by thermostats. Using AASA 2020 report data, over a five-year period from 2014, the thermostat failure rate has steadily increased to almost 5%. At the same time, the percentage of vehicles fitted with a contemporary integrated thermostat housing or MAP thermostat rather than a traditional valve-only thermostat design has grown from 55% to 80%.
In the UK, there are approximately 24.5 million cars that are four years old or more, which, using the 5% thermostat failure rate, means that annually almost one-and-a-quarter million will need replacing.
As the majority of these will fall within the independent sector, the thermostat replacement market is realistically estimated to be around 850,000 units a year. Despite half of these being relatively inexpensive valve type thermostats, the contemporary designs of the other half are of significantly higher value, which means they represent £5.7 million of a total market worth £6.7 million annually.
