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 eight 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. 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.

I experienced more business than I could handle by myself when I first opened the shop and was always busy, but our commercial liability insurance underwriters decided to substantially increase my premiums last summer. It was more than I could afford and made the business not worth continuing. Homeowners insurance would not cover me, so I dropped our commercial liability insurance and stopped offering repair and service work on all machinery. I now run a mail-order business which is a part time venture and work a part time job to pick up the slack.

We have been developing our family farm in the meantime. We started farming to feed our own family but are thinking about taking it commercial. Once again, this venture will require specialized insurance coverage so we’re shopping around before we start allowing customers to visit our farm. To see what is going on around here, visit my wife’s blog www.downeastthunderfarm.com and check back often as she makes regular updates – sometimes more than one or two each day.

Eventually, this site will become the primary site for the farm when it goes commercial and you’ll be able to order pure Maine maple syrup made fresh on our premises, along with live chicks, duck and chicken eggs, turkeys, veggies, fruits, and a host of other items – all raised and/or prepared on our farm. The power sports venture will be revitalized when we get the insurance problems worked out and will have a page or two on this site.

Check out my blog for other updates (found on this site).

Feel free to contact me with your comments and suggestions.

Paul J. Bennett