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By: Robert Janis
Owners Experiences
Make OMF Performance Successful
Wouldn’t it be great if the things that
interested us as kids became the basis for our
business? Witness the achievements of Tim
Orchard, president of OMF Performance Products
in Riverside, California. The company offers
parts and accessories for ATVs and UTVs
including reinforcing rings for aluminum wheels
and beadlock, a mechanical fastening device that
clamps the tire onto the wheel and provides
better traction for tires.
Orchard has been racing since he was 15
years-old. He still is at the age of 54. The
vehicles he has driven include cars,
motorcycles, ATVs, and UTVs. He was the winner
of the first UTV event held by The Best in the
Desert. He has also been on teams which have won
the Baja 500 and Baja 1000. When it was time to
get a job, Orchard went with companies involved
in off-road racing.
Orchard started OMF Performance in 1981. “I
had worked in, out, and around the off-road
industry doing such things as new product
research and development,” he said. “I got tired
working for other people and inventing things
for them that they took credit for and made them
a lot of money.
“Around 1978 or ’79 I started riding
three-wheelers and then in 1980 or ’81 I bought
one of the first Honda 2-stroke 250R air-cooled,
full-suspended three-wheel ATVs,” he continued.
He then started OMF and created products for
ATVs.
He was so early to get involved in the ATV
industry he noted that people actually called
them ATCs (all-terrain cycles) because they were
more of a cycle vehicle. The vehicles were not
referred to as all-terrain vehicles until
manufacturers came out with four-wheelers later
on in the 1980s.
So, as you can see, Orchard was in on the
ground floor of the ATC/ATV business. He was
involved making parts while there were still
three-wheelers and into the transition of
four-wheelers. His product line in the early
years was aluminum swing arm skid plates and
chassis.
Then, in about 2004, UTVs were introduced.
“When the UTVs started coming into their own, I
jumped on the opportunity,” said Orchard. “I
always thought I had an unfair advantage over
some of the people in the industry at that time
because I had experienced the introduction of
ATVs. Therefore, when the UTVs came out, it was
exactly the same environment that I experienced
when ATVs were introduced 25 years before. It
was déjŕ vu all over again.”
So, he took advantage of the experience he
had gathered in the 1980s and immediately
started making products and wheel modifications
for UTVs. Understanding the importance of the
new terrain vehicle, Orchard was co-founder of
the UTV Racing Association (UTVRA). He also
partnered with a gentleman and started
Side-by-Side Outfitters, a warehouse
distribution center for UTV parts and
accessories. He also pushed hard for magazines
to cover UTVs. “I saw UTVs as a huge opportunity
probably a year or so before they became
extremely popular,” Orchard said.
Moreover, Orchard supplied UTV wheel
enhancements to the U.S. military even before
the public knew of UTVs. “Some of the early UTVs
were developed around military use,” explained
Orchard. “They were kind of a pumped up golf
cart on steroids. The military first used them
for mundane chores at camps and bases. Then the
military started using them on Special Forces
operations. At one time OMF Performance was the
only company in the world supplying 12-inch
wheels for U.S. military operations.”
Orchard also had an advantage over others in
the industry because he was, and still is, a
racer. He keeps his eyes open for obscure
products that he knows could make a major impact
on ATVs and UTVs. That’s how he got the
reinforcing ring and beadlock.
“The first time I saw the reinforcing ring it
was on a racer’s bike,” said Orchard. “Alan
Knowles of CT Performance Racing had built a
pair of reinforcing rings to keep that racer’s
wheels from bending. I saw it and talked to
Knowles about it. Knowles was an engine builder,
and he wasn’t interested in continuing to make
the rings so I took it and expanded on it.
It’s been a huge success for OMF ever since.”
What about the beadlock? “The beadlock came
after that,” said Orchard. “I was building the
reinforcing rings and putting them on thousands
of wheels, and there was a guy making beadlocks
mostly for off-road trucks and buggies. He did a
little bit for ATVs. Well, a lot of people would
send me their wheels for a reinforcing ring on
one side, and then I dropped shipped the wheels
to this guy so that he could put on the beadlock
and vice versa. After a while the guy was too
busy doing his thing and didn’t have time to do
the wheels that I sent him. So I bought beadlock
assembly kits from him and installed them in my
shop. Soon it became more feasible for me to
make the beadlock assemblies myself. I bought
some machines and did just that.”
The beadlock is a mechanical fastening device
that clamps the tire’s bead bundle onto the
wheel rim using mechanical force instead of air
pressure. This allows you to lower the air
pressure in the tire which causes the contact
patch or footprint of the tire to expand
offering better traction, flotation, control and
a softer ride.
The company uses 21st century technology to
make its products. “We have six computer
numerical controlled machining centers in
house,” said Orchard. “and OMF does all our own
programming of those machines.”
Racers Help in R&D
Orchard noted that OMF Performance has a
factory support team (FST) of a few hundred
racers. FST riders can get from OMF as little as
one pair of wheels to as much as dozens of
wheels a year at a super discount. “FST guys
still have to pay for the product but they pay
OMF’s cost,” explained Orchard.
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