Rob Lynch
Peddlepower's Third Owner and the Founder of Privateer
A Legend Bike Co. industry page · researched from Legend Bike Co.'s own bike-shops chapter, outside collector records, and Bill Ryan's firsthand account, 2026
At a glance
Shop Peddlepower Cyclery, 325 E. Grove Ave., Orange, California
Acquired the shop 1983, from Jeff Bottema (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Ownership chain Steve Rink, then Jeff Bottema from 1981 to 1983, then Rob Lynch from 1983 (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
His company Power Racing Products — Lynch's main company (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Brand founded Privateer, the frame he released under the Power Racing Products name, built out of the same shop
The structure Peddlepower, the shop → Power Racing Products, the company → Privateer, the frame
Documented frames Pro-Lite Privateer, 1983 and 1984 model years
Early frame fabrication JMC built the custom Privateer framesets in the team's early era (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Factory team Peddlepower / Privateer — the number one bike shop team in the nation in 1986 or 1987 (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026; he is not certain which of the two years)
Core factory riders Chris Moeller, Billy Harrison, Rich Bartlett, Joe Tippit, Darren Martin, Lonnie Tatton
Girls division Holly Dunn, Mapuana Nakii
Also on the roster Ronnie Anderson, the 1985 ABA National No. 1 Pro, who rode for Power Racing Products in 1986 — a stint that ended quickly — and his brother Richie Anderson, documented on the same company from mid-April through October 1986 (both from secondary sources, not from Bill Ryan's roster)
Rider who finished on the brand Lonnie Tatton, who ended his racing career on Privateer (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Also worked at SE Racing, in shipping, alongside Bill Ryan
The Power Plus Cycles name Lynch was very mad when Bill Ryan opened a shop called Power Plus Cycles, believing Ryan was copying the Power Racing Products name; Ryan says no copying was intended (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). Power Plus opened two weeks after La Palma Cycle Center shut down, which is the firm point on its date; Ryan recalls the year as 1986 and says he may have been off on the year
Traded with Power Plus anyway Lynch's shop sold TECH pants, and Lynch had his own heat transfers made up for his jerseys but no way of putting them on, so Ryan let him borrow the TECH heat press and use it at Power Plus Cycles for his own Power Racing Products and Privateer jerseys (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Torker No connection. Lynch was never a part of Torker (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Died 2015 (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
One counter in Orange, California produced three BMX brands and change: the SR frame, Powerlite, and Privateer. Rob Lynch owned that shop, Peddlepower, when the third brand came out of it — and he also ran the race team that beat every other bike shop in the country. Beyond that, the record is thinner than we'd like — but what's there is worth putting down straight.
A Shop That Already Had a History
Peddlepower sat on East Grove Avenue in Orange, not far from the Western Sports-A-Rama track. Legend Bike Co.'s own tracks chapter and its chapter on the shops that built BMX put Steve Rink at the counter first — the same Rink who helped build the first Torker prototype. Rink's shop released its first production frame, the SR, in 1977, and the brand carried the Powerlite name by 1979. When Powerlite outgrew the shop, the Rink family sold Peddlepower. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026, gives the chain plainly: Peddlepower was owned by Steve Rink, who sold it to Jeff Bottema of the Bottema fork family in 1981. Bottema ran the shop until 1983, then sold it to Rob Lynch. That matches the sequence Legend Bike Co.'s own record already carried, and now the year matches as well — the bike-shops chapter had already placed Lynch's purchase around 1983, written from its own sources before Bill gave a date. Only the years are known. No months, no days, and none are invented here.
That Torker connection belongs to the right man, and it isn't Lynch. Peddlepower's tie to Torker sits entirely in the Rink years in the 1970s — roughly a decade before Lynch bought the shop. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026, is blunt about it: Rob Lynch was never a part of Torker. Because both names turn up in the same shop's history, a reader could easily assume otherwise, and plenty have. The record here says no.
Power Racing Products, and the Frame Called Privateer
For as long as this library has carried Rob Lynch, it has carried him one name short. Every page here called his operation Privateer and stopped there, as though the frame were the whole business. It wasn't. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026, gives the missing piece: Rob called his main company Power Racing Products, and under that name he came out with the Privateer frame.
That sets the structure three tiers deep, and it is worth stating plainly because nothing in this library has stated it before:
Peddlepower — the bike shop on East Grove Avenue, bought from Jeff Bottema in 1983.
Power Racing Products — Rob Lynch's company.
Privateer — the frame brand he released under that company.
Read in that order, a lot of loose ends tie off. A rider described in an outside source as riding for Power Racing Products was riding for Rob Lynch. A frame sold as a Privateer came out of a company most of the written record never names. Ryan does not give a founding date for Power Racing Products, and he does not say whether the company name came before or after the shop purchase. Neither is invented here. What is settled is the relationship: one man, one company, one frame brand under it, all working out of the same four walls.
One thing this page will not do is join the dots between Power Racing Products and Powerlite, the brand Steve Rink built out of the same shop years earlier. Both names start with the same word. That is all anyone can say. Nothing in the record connects them, and a shared shop address is not evidence of a shared name.
Starting Privateer
Once Lynch owned the shop, he started the Privateer brand out of the same four walls — the same pattern Rink had run with Powerlite a few years earlier. Privateer wasn't just a name change stapled onto old stock. The Pro-Lite Privateer frame is documented in BMX collector archives across both the 1983 and 1984 model years, with the 1984 example built up with a Sugino chainset, Suntour stem, Dia-Compe brakes, and Araya rims — an ordinary, complete mid-1980s race bike, produced and sold, not a one-off. That's the clearest evidence available that Lynch ran a working frame brand out of Peddlepower, not just a shop with a new name over the door.
The Number One Bike Shop Team in the Country
Here is the part the frame archives left out, and it is the biggest thing on this page. Peddlepower under Rob Lynch was not a shop with a house brand and one sponsored kid on the local track. It ran a full factory team — and for one season in the middle of the decade, it was the best bike shop team in the United States.
Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026, is direct about it: Peddlepower was the number one bike shop team in the nation. He puts that season at 1986 or 1987, and he does not claim to know which. So this page will not pick one for him. The standing is the fact worth keeping. The year stays open until somebody turns up a points sheet.
Ryan describes the squad as a core factory and co-factory group riding for both the shop and the Privateer frame, with a wider local and national shop-support crew around it. Two of the men on that roster went on to put their own names on the sport.
Core factory and co-factory
Chris Moeller — anchor rider for the Privateer team, before he founded S&M Bikes.
Billy Harrison — heavy hitter on the local and national circuit, repping the shop and the Privateer frame. He later joined Bill Ryan at TECH and was, per Ryan, the first factory Supercross rider — a claim about Legend Bike Co.'s own family of companies that belongs on Harrison's page, not this one.
Rich Bartlett — primary co-factory rider for Privateer, alongside Moeller and Martin. What he did after Privateer — Block Bikes, a frame brand built by Cyclecraft, which turned into a clothing company and then a bike shop in Lancaster, California — is his own chapter's story.
Joe Tippit — early team member, repping Privateer during the era when JMC was fabricating the custom framesets.
Darren Martin — key factory racer, repping both the shop and Privateer.
Lonnie Tatton — high-profile local and district racer, and a main fixture of the crew.
Read that list again with the dates in mind. Moeller was riding for a bike shop in Orange before S&M existed. Harrison was racing a Privateer frame before there was a Supercross BMX frame to race. Bartlett was a co-factory guy here before Block. Rob Lynch's shop team is upstream of three brands that came after it, and nobody has written that down until now.
The girls division
Peddlepower ran a girls division, and the two riders Bill Ryan names for it were not there to fill an entry sheet. They were factory riders on the fastest shop team in the country.
Holly Dunn — a fast Southern California racer of national caliber, riding for the team.
Mapuana Nakii — a top female racer, repping Peddlepower at Southern California district events and at nationals.
Neither has a chapter in this library. Neither turns up in the frame archives, the shop histories, or the magazine indexes that carry the Privateer name. That is not an accident and it is not unique to them — women's racing before 2000 is one of the largest holes in the written record of BMX, and this library has already flagged it as a missing chapter of its own. Two named factory riders on a national number one shop team, with no results ledger, no photo caption, and no date range attached to either of them, is precisely what that hole looks like from the inside. Their names go on the record here so the next person looking has a place to start.
The ninth name, and a tenth
Bill Ryan's roster ran to eight riders. There are two more, and they arrived from the opposite direction — not from Ryan's memory of the team, but from a secondary account of two brothers' careers that named the company without ever naming the man behind it.
Ronnie Anderson — "Crazy Ronnie," the 1985 ABA National No. 1 Pro, rode for Power Racing Products in 1986. Because Power Racing Products was Rob Lynch's company, that puts Anderson on this roster (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). The ride ended quickly, and badly: he was let go after an on-track altercation at an ABA national. That is as far as this page goes on it. Anderson's own chapter carries the detail, and it also carries a dating problem that Legend Bike Co. has flagged rather than solved.
Richie Anderson — Ronnie's younger brother, twice ABA National No. 1 Amateur and a 1994 ABA BMX Hall of Fame inductee, is on the same company from mid-April through October 1986. That is roughly six months, and it is the longest documented stint anybody has on Power Racing Products in the sources checked. It is also secondary: Bill Ryan did not name him, and this page records the connection on the strength of the company name Ryan confirmed rather than on a firsthand roster.
Who Built the Frames
The early Privateer framesets were not welded in the back of the shop. JMC — Jim Melton Cyclery — was fabricating the custom Privateer frames during the era Joe Tippit was riding for the team (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). That is a plain manufacturing fact, and it puts a second name on the bikes: Lynch's brand, Melton's fabrication.
It also fits what JMC was. Melton's operation built frames under its own name and built frames for other people, and its own chapter here runs to 1985 — which places the Privateer work squarely inside JMC's working life. How long the arrangement ran, which model years it covered, and whether the documented 1983 and 1984 Pro-Lite Privateer frames came out of Melton's shop or somewhere else are not established here, and no dates are claimed for any of it.
The Rider Who Finished His Career on a Privateer
Lonnie Tatton is the rider name attached to Lynch's brand longest, and it is attached firmly. Tatton rode for Privateer, and Privateer is where his racing career ended (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). He had come up through Pro Neck and then SE Racing, with a short stop at Answer Racing in between, and Lynch's shop-built frame is the one he finished on.
He also test rode the Pro-size Privateer for Super BMX in November 1987, under a heading that read "Privateer Pro" — a frame name and a frame size, not a rider class. That test used to look like Tatton's only point of contact with the brand. It isn't. Read alongside the ride that followed and the team he was a fixture of, it looks instead like a rider getting his first go on a bike he would end up racing for real.
Rob Lynch and Bill Ryan, in a Shipping Department
There is one more piece of Rob Lynch's story, and it comes from inside Legend Bike Co. Long before any of this was history, Lynch worked in shipping at SE Racing alongside Bill Ryan. Ryan was helping out with shipping at the time, and Lynch is the man who taught him how to do international shipping documents (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026).
It sounds like a small thing. It isn't. Paperwork is how a bike company gets a frame across a border, and somebody has to show you the first time. The man who ran the number one shop team in the country showed the man who would go on to found Supercross BMX. Ryan says only that it was a long time ago; no dates are attached to it, and neither the SE Racing chapter nor Ryan's own page has carried this until now.
Two Shops, Two Names That Started the Same Way
Rob Lynch's company was Power Racing Products. Bill Ryan opened his own bike shop and called it Power Plus Cycles — two weeks after La Palma Cycle Center shut down, which is the firm point on when it opened. Ryan puts the year at 1986 and says he may have been off on the year, so this page does not fix one. Ryan's account, firsthand in 2026, is that Lynch was very mad about it, because Lynch thought Ryan was copying his name. Ryan says that was not the case at all.
Both halves of that belong on the record, and neither one settles the other. Two shop owners working the same trade in the same corner of Southern California, with two company names opening on the same word — a man who had built something under that name had every reason to notice it, and to say so. The man who picked the second name says he was not reaching for the first. Rob Lynch died in 2015 and cannot give his own side of it, so what stands here is Bill Ryan's recollection of another man's view, attributed rather than asserted. Nothing in the record says it went further than that, and this page does not decide who was right.
The Heat Press, and the Decals in the Bathroom
Whatever the name did to Rob Lynch's blood pressure, it never got in the way of the two shops doing business. Peddlepower sold TECH pants — Bill Ryan's own brand, off Rob Lynch's rack.
And the press worked the other way round. Rob had his own heat transfers made up for his jerseys and no way of putting them on, so Ryan let him borrow the TECH press and use it at Power Plus Cycles. Rob brought the artwork; Power Plus had the machine. That is how the Power Racing Products jerseys and the Privateer jerseys got printed (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). It is a smaller and better fact than the one this page carried before, which said only that he used the press — he was not turning up empty-handed to borrow somebody else's design. He came with his own.
Every time he did, Peddlepower decals turned up all over the bathrooms (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026).
Rob Lynch
Rob Lynch died in 2015 (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). What stands is the work. A bike shop counter in Orange, California. A company of his own, and a frame brand he built under it and put under real riders. The number one bike shop team in the country, with two future brand founders on the roster and two women in the girls division whose names would otherwise have gone unrecorded. A shipping desk where he took the time to show a younger man how to get a bike across a border. And a rival's heat press, borrowed with his own transfers under his arm, often enough that the bathrooms never quite got clean. That is the chapter.
On Power Racing Products specifically: the company name and its relationship to Peddlepower and Privateer are firsthand from Bill Ryan, 2026. Nothing else about the company is. There is no founding date, no incorporation record, no address of its own separate from the shop, and no statement anywhere in the sources checked as to whether the name predates or postdates Lynch's 1983 purchase of Peddlepower. None of that is guessed at here. The company also shares its first word with Powerlite, the earlier brand out of the same shop; whether that is continuity or coincidence, no source says, and this library draws no line between them.
On the Power Plus Cycles name: only one side of the disagreement is on the record. Bill Ryan gives his own account and his reading of Rob Lynch's reaction; Lynch died in 2015 and left nothing on it that this library has found. What is now settled is that it did not stop the two men trading — Peddlepower sold TECH pants, and Lynch brought his own heat transfers over and printed his own jerseys on the TECH heat press at Power Plus, which Ryan let him borrow (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026; a September 2026 clarification that corrects this page's earlier wording, which recorded only that Lynch used or borrowed the press and did not note that the transfers were his own). Whether the two men ever formally settled the name itself, and whether Lynch ever put his objection in writing, are still unknown, and neither is guessed at here. No dates are recorded for the pants, the press, or the decals. The date of Power Plus Cycles is itself only half-fixed. It opened two weeks after La Palma Cycle Center shut down, and that gap is firm. The year is not: Bill Ryan recalls 1986 and says he may have been off on the year. The full three-way weighing of the year — Ryan's recollection, BlackCycling's 1987 to 1989 dating of La Palma, and the 1989 ceiling set by Supercross BMX starting out of Power Plus — is set out on the Bill Ryan and bike shops chapters, and no year is picked in any of them.
On the team roster specifically: no years are recorded for any individual rider's stint — not a start, not an end, not for a single one of the eight riders Bill Ryan named on this page — and none are invented here. The two Anderson brothers are the exception and the caveat both: they come with 1986 dates attached, and they come from secondary sources rather than from Ryan. Ronnie Anderson's dates contradict each other on the month; that contradiction is set out on his own page and is not resolved here. Richie Anderson's mid-April to October 1986 stretch is uncontradicted but uncorroborated, and whether either brother actually raced a Privateer frame for the company is not documented anywhere checked. Two names arrived with alternate spellings and are flagged rather than fixed: Bill Ryan wrote Lonnie Tatton's surname with "Totten" in parentheses, and Darren Martin's first name with "Darin" in parentheses. This library uses Tatton and Darren, and has kept both, but neither spelling should be treated as settled and both are open questions. Joe Tippit, Darren Martin, Holly Dunn, Mapuana Nakii, Block Bikes and Cyclecraft have no chapters in this library yet.
oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked first, per house research standards, before any secondary source — oldschoolmags.com turned up no dedicated Rob Lynch or Privateer item, and bmxsociety.com's own "Privateer / Peddlepower" community thread, which appears by title to be exactly the discussion this page needed, could not be loaded through the tools available for this research session. Both gaps are disclosed here rather than papered over. If you have firsthand knowledge of Rob Lynch, Power Racing Products, the Privateer years at Peddlepower, or that factory team — a results sheet, a team photo, a plate number, anything on Holly Dunn or Mapuana Nakii — Legend Bike Co. wants to hear from you.
Where Rob Lynch fits in the bigger story
Shop: The Bike Shops That Made BMX. Brands: Powerlite, which shared the same shop and the same eventual sale to GT Bicycles at the end of the 1980s; JMC, which fabricated the early Privateer framesets; S&M Bikes, founded by the team's anchor rider; TECH, the brand his shop stocked and whose heat press he borrowed to put his own transfers on his jerseys; and Supercross BMX, whose first factory rider came off this roster. People: Jeff Bottema, the owner before him, who had bought the shop from Steve Rink and sold it on to Lynch; Lonnie Tatton, who finished his racing career on Lynch's Privateer; Chris Moeller, Billy Harrison and Rich Bartlett off the factory roster; Ronnie Anderson and Richie Anderson, the brothers who rode for Power Racing Products in 1986; and Bill Ryan, who learned international shipping paperwork from Lynch at SE Racing and later opened Power Plus Cycles. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.
Sources
Legend Bike Co., The Bike Shops That Made BMX and Powerlite chapters (own published record, including Mark Rink's firsthand family recollection). Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX and co-owner of Legend Bike Co., firsthand, 2026 — identified the Super BMX "Privateer Pro" item as a bike test of a Pro-size frame with Lonnie Tatton as the test rider, and gave Tatton's full sponsor chain: Pro Neck, then SE Racing, then Answer Racing briefly, and finally Privateer, where his career finished. Ryan also supplied, firsthand in 2026, the Peddlepower and Privateer factory team roster reproduced on this page — the number one bike shop team in the nation in 1986 or 1987, its core factory riders, and its girls division — along with JMC's role fabricating the custom Privateer framesets, and his own account of working in shipping at SE Racing with Rob Lynch, who taught him how to do international shipping documents. Ryan supplied three further points firsthand in 2026: the Peddlepower ownership chain, Steve Rink to Jeff Bottema to Rob Lynch, with Bottema buying the shop in 1981, running it until 1983, and selling it to Lynch that year; that Rob Lynch was never a part of Torker, the shop's Torker connection belonging instead to the Rink era; and that Rob Lynch died in 2015. Ryan supplied one more, firsthand in 2026: that Rob Lynch's main company was Power Racing Products, that Privateer was the frame he came out with under that name, and that when Ronnie Anderson rode for Power Racing Products he was riding for Rob Lynch — the source for the three-tier structure and the extra roster names on this page. Bill Ryan, firsthand, September 2026 — that he opened his own shop, Power Plus Cycles, two weeks after La Palma Cycle Center shut down, which is the firm point on its date, with the year being his recollection of 1986 that he says he may have been off on rather than an established date; that Rob Lynch was very mad about the name because he believed Ryan was copying his company name, and that no copying was intended; recorded on this page as Ryan's recollection of another man's view, attributed rather than asserted, because Lynch died in 2015 and cannot answer it. Bill Ryan, firsthand, September 2026 — that Rob Lynch's shop sold TECH pants; that Lynch had his own heat transfers made up for his jerseys but no way of putting them on, so Ryan let him borrow the heat press TECH jerseys were printed on and use it at the shop to make his own Power Racing Products and Privateer jerseys; and that every time he did, Peddlepower decals turned up all over the bathrooms. That last point is a September 2026 clarification and corrects this page's earlier wording, which recorded only that Lynch used or borrowed the press without noting that the transfers were his own; the same correction has been made on the TECH and Bill Ryan chapters. No dates were given for any of it and none are inferred. Where Ryan gave two spellings for a rider's name, both are recorded above and neither is resolved. Legend Bike Co.'s own Ronnie Anderson and Richie Anderson chapters, and behind them Wikipedia's "Richie Anderson (BMX rider)" entry and BMXmuseum.com, for the two brothers' 1986 stints on Power Racing Products — secondary, and flagged as such. bmxmuseum.com, Peddlepower Cyclery shop-history page (independent account naming only Steve Rink; consulted for cross-check, does not corroborate the Bottema/Lynch ownership sequence). bmxmuseum.com, Pro-Lite model archive (1983 and 1984 Pro-Lite Privateer frame records). oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked first per house research standards; neither returned a fetchable, dedicated Rob Lynch or Privateer item at the time of research, disclosed here plainly.