BMX Racing History · Brand Profile · Legend Bike Co

Powerlite

Powerlite came out of the same neighborhood pattern as half the brands in this library — a bike shop with a race team, a frame that started selling faster than the shop could keep up with, and a name change forced by somebody else's paperwork. Steve Rink ran a shop called Peddlepower in Orange, California. By the end of the 1980s, the brand that grew out of it belonged to GT.

A Shop in Orange, California

Peddlepower sat on East Grove Avenue in Orange, not far from the Western Sports-A-Rama track where Gary Turner's early frames were selling out of the Pedals Ready pro shop. Legend Bike Co.'s own chapter on the shops that built BMX puts Steve Rink at the counter — the same Rink who helped build the first Torker prototype. Peddlepower's first production frame, the SR, shipped in 1977. It sold well enough that the shop's own frame line outgrew the shop.

Peddlepower Becomes Powerlite

The name changed by 1979. An unrelated East Coast company was already using "Peddlepower," and a September 1979 item in BMX Action — cited on 23mag.com's Powerlite history page — points to that naming conflict as the reason the brand moved to Powerlite. The shop kept running; the frame brand carried the new name forward.

The Frames — 4130 Chromoly, Built Light

Powerlite marketed its frame and fork as 4130 chromoly from the start, built to a sub-4-pound frame weight with a 1 pound 10 ounce fork — light for the era. The details changed year to year: a square brake bridge ran 1977-78, replaced by a slotted bridge from 1979 on; the front gusset carried a distinctive hole from 1977 through 1981, dropped in 1982; dedicated Powerlite-branded forks arrived in 1982.

The model line grew wide. Entry and mid-tier bikes ran the P11 Cobra, P16 6-Speed, P17 Fireball, and the hi-tensile-steel P19 Falcon/Warhawk. The P24 was the cruiser. The P28 Intruder stepped up to tri-moly tubing. The P38 Lightning and P51 Mustang carried full 4130 chromoly, with the Mustang built as the Pro-level 20-inch frame. The P61 Coqpit was the Pro XL, mixing 4130 and alloy. A 6061-T6 aluminum Junior model, the P47 Thunderbolt, and full aluminum framesets followed in 1992, well after the brand's peak.

The Powerbend Bars — Built by VDC

Powerlite's signature accessory was the Powerbend handlebar, and the company didn't bend that tubing itself. Legend Bike Co.'s own Voris Dixon Company chapter confirms, on Voris Dixon's own account, that VDC built 24-inch and some 20-inch Powerlite forks along with the "power bend" CW Pro-style bars, on contract for Steve Rink. It's the same story that runs through half this library — a Santa Ana job shop bending tubing for brands that never touched a torch themselves.

The Team

Tommy Brackens, known as "The Human Dragster," rode for Powerlite Racing from April 1981 through September 1983 — years before he'd go on to design his own brand, Brackens Bikes, with Bill Ryan. Kirk Chrisco rode for the team and turned up as a BMX Action test rider. Charles Townsend, a 2014 BMX Hall of Fame inductee, listed Powerlite among his sponsors, confirmed directly on bicycleretailer.com's 2014 Hall of Fame announcement. On the freestyle side, Trevor Meyer joined Powerlite in 1994 — the first freestyler to ride for the brand. Powerlite's own current site also names Mario Soto, Danny Nelson, and Donny Robinson as 1990s factory riders, and claims two ABA Factory Team titles; we're presenting that as the brand's own account rather than independently verified here.

When Rink Sold the Shop

Peddlepower itself changed hands more than once after the Powerlite brand outgrew it. Per Legend Bike Co.'s bike-shops chapter, the shop passed to Jeff Bottema of the Bottema fork family, then to Rob Lynch around 1983 — and Lynch started the Privateer brand out of the same four walls. Steve Rink's son Mark has also mentioned a brief ownership stretch by Bob Osborn somewhere in that chain; we don't have a second source confirming it, so it's presented as a single family recollection, not a settled fact. One shop counter in Orange produced three brands and change: Powerlite, Privateer, and the SR frame that started it.

Into GT

Legend Bike Co.'s own GT Bicycles chapter places the Powerlite acquisition at the end of the 1980s, around 1988-89, alongside GT's purchase of the Riteway distribution business in 1987. That's the record this page follows for consistency with the rest of the library. A separate secondary account, on 23mag.com and citing fatbmx.com's Erick Bartoldus, instead describes Powerlite being sold in the mid-1980s to an unnamed owner and then purchased in 1990 by Rich Long, by then GT's president. We could not resolve which date is correct, and we're not picking one silently — both are on the record, and our own site's established 1988-89 date is what this page uses going forward.

What Became of the Name

Powerlite shared GT's Huntington Beach and Santa Ana, California addresses through the 1990s. As late as 2011, PowerLite still appeared on Dorel Industries' own list of bicycle brands, alongside GT, Mongoose, and Schwinn — confirmed on bicycleretailer.com's coverage of Dorel's 2011 bike-division sales. Today, powerlitebmx.com presents an active "Factory Powerlite DFR BMX Team" with a current rider roster and frame sales. Whether that's an independent revival of the name, a licensed use of it, or a continuation somewhere inside the GT/Pacific Cycle/Dorel/PON Holdings ownership chain isn't something we could confirm from the sources checked here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who founded Powerlite?
Steve Rink, out of his Peddlepower bike shop in Orange, California. The shop's SR frame shipped in 1977; the brand carried the Powerlite name by 1979.

Who built Powerlite's forks and bars?
The Voris Dixon Company (VDC) of Santa Ana, on contract for Steve Rink — forks and the signature Powerbend handlebars.

When did GT buy Powerlite?
Our own GT Bicycles chapter dates it to the end of the 1980s, around 1988-89. A secondary source gives 1990; we flag the conflict rather than resolve it.

Sources

23mag.com, Powerlite BMX company history (citing BMX Action, September 1979, and powerlite.wordpress.com); bmxmuseum.com, Powerlite brand model archive; bicycleretailer.com, "BMX Hall of Fame announces 2014 inductees" (July 2, 2014) and "Bike division boosts Dorel's sales in 2011" (March 8, 2012); powerlitebmx.com, current brand site; Legend Bike Co.'s own The Bike Shops That Made BMX, GT Bicycles, and Voris Dixon Bikes chapters, cross-checked for consistency. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked first per house research standards; both returned no fetchable period content for Powerlite at the time of research, so this page relies on the secondary and company-history tier instead, disclosed here plainly.