About

About Downeast Thunder Power Sports and Paul Bennett

I’m an engineer, designer, fabricator, certified motorcycle technician, and former professional road racing motorcycle builder/tuner. I started riding motorcycles when I was nine years old, and began racing moto-cross and riding enduros when I was around sixteen. I competed in desert races and raced short track, moto-cross, and TT-scrambles while serving in the US Marine Corps and stationed in 29 Palms, California. After the service I started roadracing and worked my way up to expert at the club level and later acquired a professional AMA roadracing license to compete in the Battle of the Twins series (precursor to Super Twins). I was also a professional race bike tuner for independant rider, Joel Samick in the AMA professional Superbike Series of races. As I got older, it hurt more when I crashed and took longer to recover. I then got into the Harley thing, was in bike clubs, did the poker runs and took part in various other events of that nature. For awhile I was a road captain and assistant director of the Cape Cod Chapter of HOG (I’m a life member of the National HOG Club).

I began my career as a motorcycle mechanic. I was trained in the beginning at local shops (OJT) and then later sent to various manufacturers factory training schools. I later attended American Motorcycle Institute in Daytona, Florida and graduated first in my class (1976).

I’ve worked as a motorcycle mechanic, service manager, and general manager of several motorcycle dealerships over the years. I later returned to school and earned my BS degree in engineering. I worked as a professional engineer and returned to the motorcycle industry to design, build, and tune motorcycle roadracing engines in the mid-eighties (the business back in the mid-eighties was known as Bennett Engine Dynamics). Customers had me build and tune complete machines during that time, along with drag bike engines, hot street machines, moto-cross racing engines, and I even built/prepped a few formula car engines for local SCCA club racers.

I went back to professional engineering for several years until I got the itch to get back into the motorcycle business. I took a job as a service writer for a large powersports dealership that carried several brands of motorcycles, snowmobiles, ATV’s and personal watercraft and remained there until my family and I decided to move to Downeast Maine about five years ago.

That leads us to the present: My latest venture. Downeast Thunder Powersports is not just a job or business from which to make a living. It’s my passion. I love machinery of all kinds, and that even includes the smaller machines such as scooters and mopeds. The big, multi-cylinder “crotch-Rockets” and huge highway cruisers are great fun and I like those too, but I personally prefer single and twin cylinder 4-stroke machines.

Paul J. Bennett