The Brake System: Performance Machine Inc., Paramount

“I was a shop guy in high school,” said Perry Sands, “and I tinkered with motorcycles and took machine shop and tool design in college and worked in a machine shop. Three or four months after I got married in 1970, I quit my job, sold my new truck and opened my own business.”

Performance Machine, which makes custom brake systems and wheels for motorcycles, now employs 122 people. Among other things, it makes the brake system used by Buell Motorcycle Co., the sport bike maker in Troy, Wis., that is 49% owned by Harley Davidson Co.

Although motorcycles have always been its primary focus, Sands said Performance once dabbled in making oil well drilling tools and parts for medical equipment “and we’ve made quite a few aerospace components through the years too. But in the late 1980s when we saw that aerospace wasn’t looking too good, we threw all that out and went back to motorcycles.”

Sands, 47, said his business “took off when Harley Davidson started gathering steam in the mid 1980s. People would add high-performance stuff and then find out that the stock wheels and brakes wouldn’t hold up, so they came to us.”

For MCM’s prototype, Performance used an existing brake system of its own design, but Sands said the company has been asked to develop a lighter, customized system for MCM’s production bikes. He said he is hoping for a relationship like the one his company has with Buell.

“They made 150 bikes in 1992, then hooked up with Harley and made 800 in 1994 and plan on 2,000 next year. I can see MCM doing something like that” and using Performance brakes on every bike.