Tim Marengo has joined Hydra-Electric as our new Quality Assurance Manager, a very important role for our customers. Quality Assurance must maintain the strictest standards or compliance as well as ensure that all engineering development and manufacturing practices precisely match our customers’ expectations. Through development, numerous revisions, design modifications, testing and production, they perform the tasks which ensure that our delivered parts meet stringent codes, performance expectations and governmental regulations.

But there’s much more fun to it than just that. It began for Tim more than two decades ago, when he served for four years in San Francisco as a UH-1N helicopter repair specialist and crew chief with the Air Force on the GI Bill. During his term, he discovered that those early birds weren’t designed to make repair easy. In fact, the designs required more improvisation than anything else. He believed there could be better engineering. And his future was set.

Tim attended Arizona State University, where he earned a degree in Aerospace Engineering. During his junior and senior years, he interned with Honeywell, who immediately hired him upon graduation. Starting as Test Lab Engineer, Tim quickly rose through the ranks becoming a manger. His aptitude with quality issues led him to seek and be awarded two highly prized certifications while at Honeywell, both Designated Engineer Representative and Designated Airworthiness Representative with the FAA. “The FAA doesn’t give away anything,” Tim jokes. But attaining these two credentials made him a rare commodity in the aerospace field. He went on to strong advancements at Allied Signal in Arizona and Dukes in Northridge, creating policy, training managers and developing, designing, testing and certifying components and systems.

Tim uses his spare time sparingly, restoring great motorcycles for off-road racing and touring. “I don’t really have much down time from work, but when I do, I like to build and restore things… which puts me out in the garage a lot…” The pictured bike was one of his latest… a 1976 KZ900 LTD, and his current project is a Kawasaki KZ650. “It’s a café racer,” he claims. “So it’ll be going to a lot of cafés. Actually, I’m calling it Dirty Kurt, cause it’s going to get real dirty.”