A Legend Bike Co. rider page · BMX History Project
Jeff Utterback
The JU-6, GJS Bicycles, and the Frame Behind the PK Ripper
At a glance
Level AA Pro (turned pro unofficially, 1978)
Era 1973 to early 1980s racing, GJS Bicycles into 1985
Teams BUMS / FMF (under Scot Breithaupt) · SE Racing (JU-6 namesake) · GJS Bicycles (family company, co-founder)
Known for The SE JU-6 — SE's first frame and the aluminum ancestor of the PK Ripper · Co-founding GJS Bicycles with his father George and brother Scott · The GJS "A" Frame, an early tube-gusset design credited with pushing BMX geometry forward · A post-BMX career as an aerospace welder and, later, GT Bicycles' titanium shop
Before there was a PK Ripper, there was a JU-6 — SE Racing's very first frame, built in aluminum and named for the kid who'd just finished the season ranked sixth in the country. That kid was Jeff Utterback, and the frame carrying his initials is the direct ancestor of the longest continuously produced frame in BMX history. Utterback didn't stick around to ride the version that made the name famous. He left to build his own bikes with his father and brother instead, and GJS Bicycles ended up changing how BMX frames were gusseted for the next several years.
BUMS, FMF, and a 14-year-old who couldn't be beat
Utterback's first race was in 1973 at the legendary BUMS track in Long Beach — Scot Breithaupt's Bicycle United Motocross Society, the operation that ran BMX's first organized races. That's where the two of them met. Utterback rode for Breithaupt across three different teams as Breithaupt's own career moved — Dan Gurney's team, then FMF, then SE Racing once Breithaupt started it in 1977. As a 14-year-old on the FMF team, period accounts describe him as essentially unbeatable, the kind of rider who made a name for himself before he could legally drive to the races.
His best two seasons were 1976 and 1977. In 1976 he finished third in the nation across all combined classes — in an era before BMX gave out separate number-one rankings by age group, which meant a combined-class podium finish like that was as high as the sport's numbers went. That same year he and Breithaupt won a national number one together in sidehack. By 1977 he'd climbed to national number 6.
The JU-6 — SE's first frame, named for a ranking
That #6 national ranking is exactly where the name came from. SE Racing's first production frame, released in 1978, was an aluminum race frame called the JU-6 — "JU" for Jeff Utterback's initials, "6" for his 1977 national ranking. It set the template SE ran for the next decade: put a rider's name and number on the frame, then let him go win on it. The JU-6 was aluminum from the start, not a chromoly frame converted later, and it used the flat-oval Floval tubing that became SE's signature material.
Utterback didn't stay at SE long after the JU-6 shipped. He left to start his own company with his family, and the frame he'd just put his name on was handed to the next rider in line. SE Racing's own account of that handoff notes that not long after Jeff's departure, teammate Rod Beckering snapped the head tube clean off a JU-6 at a national race and broke his jaw — the crash that pushed Perry Kramer to demand a welded head-tube gusset before he'd let his own name go on the redesigned frame. That gusseted, renamed bike became the PK Ripper, in continuous production since 1978 — the longest run of any BMX frame ever built, and it starts with the ungusseted aluminum bike that carried Jeff Utterback's initials first.
Turning pro, unofficially, at Western Sports-A-Rama
Around the same period, Utterback turned pro unofficially and won one of the first pro races ever held at Western Sports-A-Rama (WSA) — a 14-and-older class he entered at 14 years old, beating riders both older and more established, including Kevin McNeil and Stu Thomsen. From 1976 through 1979 he also worked with the Consumer Product Safety Commission teaching bicycle safety to kids — a period detail that doesn't show up in his race results but was part of his standing in the sport at the time.
GJS Bicycles — George, Jeff, and Scott
Utterback's father, George, had already started welding BMX frames at night for Bill Bastian while working his day job as a welder for the City of Long Beach Gas Department, even while Jeff was still touring with SE. When Jeff left SE Racing, the family turned that into a company: GJS, built from George, Jeff, and younger brother Scott's first initials. Jeff went semi-retired from racing in 1981 to work the family business full time, though he kept racing on GJS frames from 1979 onward and briefly returned to competition in 1983 before stepping back again.
GJS ran out of a small garage operation but set a real standard: it's credited as one of the first BMX builders to use welded tube gussets in place of stamped sheet-metal gussets, most visible on the company's flagship "A" Frame — a design with a distinctive triangular front gusset and a top tube long for its day, which collectors and the historical record both point to as an early step toward modern BMX frame geometry. GJS expanded into forks, bars, and a seat post clamp starting around 1979-80, added freestyle frames by 1983, and released the GJS Big Tube in 1985 — large-diameter tubing well ahead of when the rest of the industry adopted it. Roughly 3,000 A-Frames were built across five generations before GJS closed, making an original A-Frame a rare find today. Some of the era's biggest names rode GJS product, including Stu Thomsen, Bob Haro, and Clint Miller.
GJS closed in mid-1985 as the first BMX boom cooled. While winding down GJS, Utterback also taught beginner seminars and gave private lessons at Harbor BMX in San Pedro, and briefly ran his own mini-frame and fork line under the name JU Racing.
Life after BMX — aerospace, then GT's titanium shop
The welding skill Utterback learned building frames as a teenager turned into a real career. He spent 16 years in the aerospace industry as a specialist welder and manager for McDonnell Douglas. In the early 1990s, GT Bicycles' Rich Long hired him to set up GT's in-house titanium manufacturing department — taking the same torch skill that built the JU-6 and the GJS A-Frame into one of BMX's biggest manufacturers at the time. Today Utterback lives in Southern California and stays connected to motorsports, spending time around drag strips and 200-plus-mph nitro funny cars.
A kid on the SE production floor
Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX, started at SE Racing in 1981 at age 12, sweeping floors and stickering frames on the production crew alongside Perry Kramer and Byron Friday. By his own account, Jeff Utterback was one of the riders who came through the SE building regularly during those years — a detail that places Utterback back around SE's Paramount Boulevard shop even after his own racing and GJS years had begun.
Where Jeff Utterback fits in the bigger story
Riders: Scot Breithaupt, Perry Kramer, Stu Thomsen, Byron Friday, Bill Ryan. Brands: BUMS, SE Racing, GT Bicycles. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.
Sources
USA BMX Hall of Fame biography page, usabmx.com/site/postings/123 — career summary including the BUMS/FMF years, the JU-6, GJS's founding and the "A" Frame, the unofficial 1978 pro win at WSA over Kevin McNeil, and the McDonnell Douglas and GT titanium-shop career after racing. BMXmuseum.com — "Jeff Utterback GJS Info" reference page (bmxmuseum.com/bikes/info/199), source for the 1976 third-in-combined-classes finish, the 1976 sidehack #1 with Scot Breithaupt, the WSA win specifically naming both Kevin McNeil and Stu Thomsen as the riders he beat, the 1976-1979 CPSC bicycle-safety work, and the Harbor BMX teaching and JU Racing details. bmxsociety.com community forum threads, including "Saturday with the Utterbacks — Deep Dive Into the GJS Reality" and "SE Racing ~ JU6" (site: search per Legend Bike Co's standing primary-source protocol; snippets only, disclosed). SE Racing chapter on this site, for the corroborating account of the JU-6, the Rod Beckering crash, and the PK Ripper gusset. Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX — first-hand recollection of Jeff Utterback passing through the SE Racing production floor in the early 1980s.