GREENFIELD — Eric Amato happened to be hanging out with a competitive racing team from Pennsylvania in 2017 when members were performing diagnostics on their failing steering pumps.

“I heard them talking about flow rates and pressures, and it just clicked,” he said. The engineer at BETE Fog Nozzle helped his friends figure out a way to address the issue and, though he didn’t know it at the time, he was planting the seed for his own small business venture down the line.

Amato founded Radial Dynamics to design specialty steering systems for off-road vehicles. He had been working out of his home until he purchased the building at 16 Butternut St. last year.

“My goal is not to just be another steering company, because there are … a lot of places that people can go to get a steering pump, components,” he said. “My goal is to really try to build parts and systems that are unique and that push the limits of what we have for technology in the motorsports market.”

Amato, 36, moved into the building Tyler Ward had occupied until Ward moved his rug-cleaning company, Pristine Orientals, to Wells Street. Amato said the building spans 5,300 square feet, though he rents out a 1,400-square-foot office to a couple that owns a company dabbling in arts and crafts, T-shirt printing, embroidery and laser marking. In fact, they’re responsible for the Radial Dynamics logo.

“The value that I bring to the market is that I’m not just buying mass-produced pumps and slapping my sticker on them and selling them. I actually buy all of the individual pieces and then I hand-assemble everything here,” Amato explained. “There’s some different polishing techniques and things that I do to make the pumps work as well as they do.”

The hydraulics specialist is also working on a high-voltage power steering pump intended for electric vehicles.

“There are a lot of electric power steering systems that are out there on the market,” he said, “but with any kind of … purely electric [vehicle], you kind of run into issues with how much power they can really deliver for a period of time.”

Amato, who grew up in Chelmsford, earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2008. He took his first job working for BETE Fog Nozzle, around the corner from his current shop. He started off as an application engineer, helping customers determine the proper products and how to use them before growing into product development and eventually starting an integrated engineered spray systems division.

“[At the] end of 2017, I developed a few products that were ... prototyped and I had a couple [racing] teams that were testing parts for all of 2018. That worked so well I decided in 2019 to actually go into business producing those parts, and it snowballed,” he said, explaining it was a side business until 2021.

Amato said he is experiencing 50% year-over-year growth and is looking to hire his first employee. He said he has customers across the United States as well as Canada, Australia, Europe and Africa.

“Business has been steadily growing and I’ve got parts going to a lot of different places,” he said.

Staying competitive

Amato still competes in the racing world himself and belongs to the New England Hillclimb Association. It consists of timed trials, meaning drivers race against the clock. He also recently sponsored a rock climbing competition in West Virginia.

He brings along a roughly 1,800-pound buggy that he restored to competitions, having found it on Craigslist in 2015.

“Even in the off-road world, this one is kind of a misfit,” he said of the buggy. “This one does not exactly fit into any particular vehicle category. It’s a totally custom-built tube chassis, hand-fabricated out in California in 2007.”

More information about Radial Dynamics is available at radial-dynamics.com. The company also maintains Facebook and Instagram pages.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.

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