It started in a guy's house in 1969 — Jim Melton fixing up old bikes in Azusa, California, and putting his own name on the door. Sixteen years later, JMC frames had a World Championship plate hanging off the front and three straight years at ABA #2. This is the story of how Jim Melton Cyclery got there, and why it closed on Jim's own terms.

JMC Racing

The Story of Jim Melton Cyclery — 1969 to 1985

Same deal as the SE Racing chapter and the History of BMX. Straight down the middle. Nobody gets put on a pedestal, nobody gets shorted, and when the record is fuzzy I'll tell you it's fuzzy. That's the whole promise.

The name, first

Three letters. Let's clear them up before we go anywhere else. JMC stands for Jim Melton Cyclery. It is not some guy's initials. Jim Melton opened a bike shop out of his house in 1969, named it after himself, and that name rode on every frame the company ever made. You'll still run into people who talk about JMC like the letters belong to somebody else. They don't. Jim was the J, Melton Cyclery was the MC. End of mystery.

And it was a family shop, top to bottom — Jim's own son helped draw the logo. Jim ran it. His wife Vera ran it right alongside him. When Vera got sick in 1985, that was that. The company closed.

Where it started

1969. One man, one bike shop, run out of Jim Melton's home. He fixed up old bikes and sold parts — road stuff mostly, to local Southern California folks. By 1974 he had a real storefront in Azusa, California, with JM Cyclery on the door. The thing he was known for was building wheels.

That same year he started messing with BMX. Not building bikes — selling a kid the bits and pieces to turn a plain bicycle into something that looked like a motocross bike. Fenders. Fake gas tanks. Number plates. Grips. You know the look.

The bike shop team, 1975

1975, Jim's got himself a race team. John Begin talked him into it and became the first guy on the roster. The early crew was Harry Leary, Ronnie West, Don Malone, Lisa Webb, Dennis Foster, Steve West, Clint Miller, Adam Cox, Greg Frechette, and David Wilson. They rode whatever they could get their hands on — Webco, FMF, Pedals Ready GT, Race Inc frames — while JMC sold a frame under its own name, the JM Special, contract-built by Race Inc.

Stop on that for a second. Race Inc was the same shop that built the early PK Ripper for SE Racing. Back then Southern California had a handful of contract builders quietly cranking out frames for a whole bunch of brand names. JMC, SE, all of them — customers at the same few benches. That's just how it worked.

The first JMC prototypes, 1976

1976, Jim sat down with Larry Barker, George Erhart, Harry Leary, and Dennis Foster and drew up the first frames that actually wore the JMC name. The JMC XP1 was a short frame for Ronnie West. The XP2 was a longer one for Harry Leary. Six or more prototypes got made between the two.

Production of the JMC Standard kicked off in March 1977. David Wilson got the first production Short Standard — serial JMC1, dated April 6, 1977. Clint Miller got the first Long Standard — JMC20, June 15, 1977. And here's the thing people forget about Jim: he kept serial records the whole way through 1985. That's why you can pin most of JMC's timeline to the exact day instead of just the year. Almost nobody in BMX did that.

The Tear Drop fork, 1978

1978, JMC rolled out its own fork — the Tear Drop. Legs ovalized into a teardrop cross-section, turned so the wide face met the wind first. It became one of those things you could spot across the track. Tear Drop forks, that's a JMC.

1979 — the shop closes, the factory stays

By 1979 the BMX side had outgrown what a regular bike shop could carry. So Jim sold the storefront and ran JMC as a frame-and-fork maker, nothing else. The factory in Azusa was the whole show from there on.

And it was selling. JMC was already on the same short list of serious American BMX builders as Redline, SE, Mongoose, and Torker. Good company to be keeping.

The 1980 product wave

1980 is the year JMC went from one bike to five.

The JMC Mini showed up February 7, 1980. The JMC Black Shadow came March 25, 1980 — built for Kim Jarboe. First ones were painted black, and that's where the name came from. Simple as that. The first chrome Black Shadow didn't land until November 1980.

Then the JMC 3.1 XL on May 16, 1980 (serial JMC2457). Same geometry as the Short Standard, but smaller-diameter, thinner-wall tubing. Frame weighed 3.1 pounds. And the name? That came out of a contest JMC ran with Bicycle Harbor of Arizona. Matt Raymer of Oklahoma sent in "3.1 XL" — the weight, plus "Xtra Light." Kid nailed it. The name stuck for good.

1981 — ABA #2 and Darrell Young's red Shadow

By 1981 the team was flying. The factory program ran Harry Leary, Clint Miller, Tinker Juarez, Darrell Young, Andy Patterson, Solan Foster, Gary DeBacker, Melanie Cline, Carl Butler, Sam Arellano, Danny Farmer, and Jason Wharton. The 1981 ABA factory team standings had JMC sitting at #2 in the country. And they held #2 three years running — that's not a fluke, that's a program. Jason Wharton took the 1981 ABA Amateur #1 title on a JMC.

July 1981, Jim built the first red JMC Shadow for Darrell Young — serial K6097.

1982 — the Pit Bike, the Cruiser, and a World Championship

1982 stretched JMC from the smallest frame it ever made to the biggest. The 16-inch Pit Bike dropped January 14 — only 110 of those ever got built. The first 24-inch JMC Cruiser came in April. And the JR Mini, named for Justin Roos, landed September 15.

Then the big one. Summer of 1982, Darrell Young won the 15 Expert IBMXF World Championship on a JMC. Add the 15-25 Cruiser Jag World title and the 16 Expert Northwest Gold Cup on top of it. The IBMXF World #1 plate hung on the front of a JMC for 1982. That's as high as the brand's race program ever got. The peak.

The Darrell Young Design, October 1983

October 24, 1983, JMC put out the Darrell Young Design — frame, fork, and bars, all of it built around Young's own read on geometry and tubing. First two off the line, DYXP 1 and DYXP 2, were both red. Young made BMX Action's "Terrible Ten" in 1983. He turned pro in June 1984 at eighteen and won his first pro race out of the gate. Rode JMC as a pro right up to July 1985.

The Andy Patterson Series, August 1984

The other signature pro frame showed up August 2, 1984 — the Andy Patterson Series. 278 of them got built in 1984, another 55-plus in 1985, 333 total across the two years. That same April JMC dropped the Micro Mini, smaller still than the JR Mini. Only 85 of those were ever made. Rare little thing.

Harry Leary

Harry Leary is the rider you think of first when you think JMC — he was there across the whole run. He invented the "Leary," the kick-out that everybody else ended up calling a lookback. The July 1984 cover of BMX Action made it stick. Leary went into the BMX Hall of Fame in 1986, second class of inductees ever. He passed away September 7, 2024, at sixty-five. Tough one.

Tinker Juarez

Tinker Juarez rode for JMC in the early '80s before mountain biking grabbed him and never let go — two U.S. Olympic MTB teams, 1996 and 2000, and a Mountain Bike Hall of Fame spot. The man could ride anything.

Frames and forks only

The whole run, JMC sold frames and forks. No complete bikes. You brought your own parts. And every frame went out the door with a buyer's name and a date written down in Jim's books. That kind of record-keeping just doesn't happen in BMX. It's the reason you can cite JMC's history to the exact day, four decades after the doors shut.

The end — July 1985

JMC closed in July 1985. Two reasons. First, Vera Melton was sick, and Jim made the call to be home with her instead of at the factory. Second, the market — Taiwan-built frames were coming in at prices a little Azusa shop couldn't touch. Jim wouldn't move production overseas and he wouldn't cut his build quality to chase the number. So he closed the doors instead of watering down the name. I respect the hell out of that.

It was all part of the bigger BMX crash of 1986 to 1988. Torker had already gone bankrupt in November 1984. SE Racing went under in the same stretch. JMC just stopped — quiet, on Jim's terms.

The Hall of Fame and the long tail

November 1989, Jim Melton went into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame. Then in 2001, JMC took the Roost Nora Cup for Number One Bike at the Mid-West ABA Nationals in Rockford, Illinois — sixteen years after the company had stopped building anything. And Jim showed up to collect it. Jim Melton died in late July 2014. Vera had gone before him.

Azusa Cycle ran a small reissue batch of JMC frames in the early 2000s with Jim's blessing — chrome Shadows mainly — but it was a short run.

Where JMC stands today

Originals move on bmxmuseum.com and eBay. A clean chrome Black Shadow, a red Darrell Young Design, an Andy Patterson Series with numbers that match — those are some of the most collected pieces of old-school BMX going.

JMC was never the biggest brand of its day. It didn't survive the crash. Here's what it did do: run a clean factory in Azusa for eleven years, build the right frames for the right riders, win an IBMXF World Championship, finish ABA #2 three years straight, and close on the founder's terms when the time came. The frames that rolled out of that shop are still getting ridden and restored today. That's the brand. That's the whole thing.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

Sources

Wikipedia: JMC Bicycles, Darrell Young, Harry Leary, Tinker Juarez. JMC Racing — Jim Melton Cyclery BMX History (jmcbmx.wordpress.com), including the "About JMC" history written by Jim Melton and the JMC Racing Production Breakdown. BMXmuseum.com — JMC Racing brand pages and forum threads on the JMC 3.1 XL, JMC Mini, JMC Black Shadow, JMC Tear Drop forks, and Darrell Young and Andy Patterson signature frames. jmcbmx.com. SplendidBMX.com brand profile "About JMC" (October 2025). USA BMX news release "The Sport of BMX loses a Legend: HARRY LEARY" (September 10, 2024). Magazine evaluations of the Darrell Young Design in Bicycles and Dirt March 1984 and Super BMX April 1984. FatBMX interview series "Preserving BMX History #29: JMC specialist Jon Western." oldschoolmags.com archived PDF scans.