But Craig was hired to van-job up in the Bay area. We were on the road just constantly for about two years. It was unbelievable. It was hour days almost 7 days a week. It was nuts. Anyway, Bob kind of got burned on it, and at the same time, the skateboard stuff started coming on.
I had done that with Larry a few years previous. So my interest kind of went both ways. I was doing bicycles and the skateboard stuff, and then when Bob left, we just kind of let Dirtmaster go. I have somewhere floating around here an original Bike-ette Moto-X catalog. Mike Devitt: I went to work with Tommy Kamifuji.
Not really working for him, it was more on a consulting basis and contract marketing. I was doing a lot of skateboard stuff. Tommy had put this company together, and used their name because Gurney, in the automobile racing industry, his deal with All American Racers, at that time was wildly successful. We got the license to use his name, and it was a great deal because he even let us have the racecar for promotional events and stuff like that.
It was terrific. And we built a pretty nice product line with three different models of frames and we had handlebars and forks. Mike Devitt: I remember the one with the square-tube rear end was the Pro Model. I do have our old Gurney catalog and price list and all that kind of stuff. Pretty funny to look at the pricing. The first chromoly frame that I know of was, I think it might have been a couple of individual ones made by somebody, but production-wise was made by Redline, I think by Linn Kastan and Mike Konle.
I think they were the first guys that I know of that did a production chromoly frame. The ones that we were doing at Gurney were mild steel bikes as was Webco, which was about the same time maybe Webco was a little before.
And then it was at that time, while I was doing that stuff, that Scot Breithhaupt got really intimately involved with me because he came to me at the trade show and we talked about it.
He became our team captain. Scot actually hung on there at Gurney a little longer than I did. I was so involved with the skateboard stuff and the urethane wheel company that prior to it, I had already done—we had finished the catalog, finished all the marketing program, designed the bikes, everything was done—helped Set up. That was done in-house. The shop stuff, the welding of the frames, stuff like that was done in-house there in Gardena. But anyway, that was pretty much done, and I went on and did my thing with the skateboards; but Scot hung on at Gurney until the day that Tommy slammed the door and then left there and started up his deal with FMF.
The Gurney 7, that lasted for about a year, or 15 or 16 months, and when the investors pulled the plug on Tommy, that was the end of that. It just went down like a rock. Mike Devitt: Makaha. I think everyone had one as a kid. Mike Devitt: Oh, yeah, that they did. We marketed those things pretty crazy. We were amongst those. So it was definitely nation-wide and it was big business. I say big business relatively speaking. It was a good size.
Yeah, it really was. Mike Devitt: We made 7, skateboards a day for 39 straight months without a day off. It was crazy. It was just rock-n-roll. In garages? Mike Devitt: Yeah. The way we started it and Gary Turner started in a garage.
Guys like us, Skip Hess. I can give you—from the day Skipper started, I can give you that story. All those guys, it was either garage or a little shop making something else that got them into it.
It was Linn Kastan and Mike Connolly getting into the bike stuff. They were really making motorcycle frames and stuff and got into doing bikes. There was a lot of stuff going on and it was mostly guys who started out in a hole in the wall.
Going back to the Yamaha Gold Cup, your recollections on that whole event. There were four Yamaha Gold Cup events. There were three qualifiers. Current Pro girl superstar Jamie Lilly. I wish I had more time and gray hair; we would have made an effort to get her. There was that one in San Diego and the last qualifier was up in Santa Clara, up in northern California. That was where David Clinton came over and started riding for Dirtmaster also.
Then the final was there at the L. How many riders do you figure participated? It was a whopper. Yamaha had invested a ton of money in promotion. I have just gobs of photos from back there in that event. At that event, there were a lot of kids that went on to BMX careers. At the Yamaha Gold Cup, at the final, how did Dirtmaster do?
Mike Devitt: We swept all three classes, yeah. Total upset. In fact, Sports Illustrated covered that race. Scot told me later that it just bugged the hell out of the big dogs at Yamaha USA because Dirtmaster got way more copy out of it in Sports Illustrated than Yamaha did, which was crazy. But it figured because all three kids standing on the podium wore Dirtmaster jerseys and stuff like that.
It was pretty cool and it was a lot of fun. I was like ages 8 to 11 and 11 to 14 and 14 to 16 bunched together. There were only three classes. Yamaha gave away Yamaha motobikes to the winners of each class at each of the qualifiers and then at the finals, they gave them motorcycles. They also gave away big custom-made belt buckles at each of the events.
It was really cool. There were the three qualifiers and the final, so there were a total of 12 belt buckles given away and Dirtmaster kids got 8 of them in the course of the whole deal.
There were a lot of pretty well known kids on that thing too, including Stuart and Jeff Utterback, Greg Hill, oh God; a boatload of kids went on that. He went back and then when he came back, he had so much success and dealer interest—they stopped at a lot of bike shops along the way and stuff, and they were so jacked up about what he was doing that he wanted to do a bike business.
Scot started SE Racing with the financing from his mom and his dad and myself, the frames and stuff he got were essentially modified versions of what they had done with FMF.
He helped Bill design a similar version. Then Bill started his own product line. Actually, it was interesting because he kind of piggybacked what SE Racing was doing. Bill made really good tooling, I mean all the fixtures and jigs were wonderful, and we paid a lot of money for them. But what he did, he made them all with removal, interchangeable saddles and stuff, so he just pulled the floval saddles out and put a round-tube saddle in and make Race Inc.
Mike Devitt: A couple of different guys. The first guys that made the Quadangle for Scot was a company--I do business with the guy today that was one of the partners—was down in El Cohona—was called Accessories Plus.
They made some chromoly bikes. The first couple of hundred quads that were made was mild steel and then they were made in chromoly. Mike Devitt: Yeah, it was pieces. There was a couple of prototypes were made where the down tubes looped under the bottom bracket and stuff, very rare bikes, and there were only a couple—2 or 3 were made.
Then there were the mild steel bikes, and then they became chromoly. We had a lot of problems with the bikes from Accessories Plus. In fact, my first official action when I came in to work full time with SE was to go down and tie the can to Accessories Plus. There were just a myriad of problems with them and I knew better places, better ways to get them done, so we stopped that.
And then we had a guy who made racecar chassis that made the stuff for quite a while, and including the OM Flyers when we started doing that.
And that was a company called Sarte Racecars. They had working for them one of the genius drag racing chassis builders in history. It was a guy named Kent Fuller who worked on the bikes.
Kent was a superb craftsman. And they had terrible financial problems, this little shop, but they did good work and ultimately we bought them out. We bought that shop out in Gardena; we moved it in-house to our own shop; we rented a little building down in Long Beach near the harbor area, a little about 4, square foot Quonset hut style of building, and we moved manufacturing in there and yeah, Several of the guys that worked at that little company in Gardena came over and worked for us, and in fact, my shop manager today who is still with me something years later out of there.
The frame has been upgraded with an internal headset, SE Bikes: Bronco 20" With a completely new frame design that features an ultra-low standover height, the lightweight aluminum Bronco is a perfect fit for youngsters. Front and rear hand brakes and freewheel rear hub will be sure to build confidence Built with a new lightweight aluminum frame, this bike is ready to zip around on.
The training wheels, coaster brake, and hand brake will be sure to build SE Bikes: Bronco 12" Built for the kids, the all-new Bronco 12 is built with a lightweight aluminum that feature a low standover and compact geometry.
It comes equipped with training wheels, coaster brake, and a hand brake for the enthusiastic The 26" Blocks Flyer is the bike to have if you want to raise it up with the crew and catch some blocks. This year's frame has been improved with an internal headset and mid bottom bracket This year's bike is tougher than ever with the addition of an internal headset and mid-bottom bracket. With four awesome colorways to choose from, The This bike comes equipped not only with riser bars, but also with alloy bullhorn bars.
New this year SE Bikes: Wildman - With a Local officials identified the body Sunday. A born entrepreneur, he established teams, events, race organizations and companies while he was still a teenager. He also worked as a TV commentator and producer during the s and s, working on productions that featured BMX and other action sports. He consulted with several bike brands in recent years, returned to amateur racing for a while, and also sold nutritional products.
It was little secret that he struggled with addictions for many decades, and served some time in prison as a result. Many friends across the industry tried to help him get back on his feet in the BMX world during his clean periods. According to the DesertSun. Download the Industry Directory. Read the Sales Training Guide. All rights reserved. Skip to main content.
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