A BMXRacingHistory.com chapter · hosted on Legend Bike Co.

S&S Bikes

Sheehan & Sheehan Racing — the Central Texas family shop that grew out of one kid needing parts, and ended up building its own

By Bill Ryan · Founder of Supercross BMX · 37+ years in BMX · Started at SE Racing, 1981

Most BMX companies in the history books started in a Southern California garage. This one started in Central Texas, and it started the way a lot of the best ones did — because somebody's kid needed parts and kept needing them.

The kid was Ryan Sheehan. The family put its own name on the door twice over, which is where the initials come from. And by the time it was done, a shop that existed to keep one boy racing had built a race team that traveled internationally, supplied a chunk of the Texas BMX scene, and spun off a component brand that people still hunt down on the collector market thirty-odd years later.

Two Sheehans on the sign

The full name recorded for the company is Sheehan & Sheehan Racing, shortened in practice to S&S. BMXmuseum's reference entry on the company's chainrings describes it plainly as a small family-owned bike shop in the Round Rock, Pflugerville and Austin area of Texas, running from the 1980s into the early 1990s.

That same entry gives the reason it existed at all: the owner's son was into BMX racing around Central Texas and was always needing parts, for himself and for the riders around him. That is the whole origin. No investors, no business plan, no ambition to be a national brand. A family that got tired of chasing parts and decided to stock them.

The Sheehans were a Pflugerville family. Ryan's sister, Farren, writing on the family's memorial site for her brother, remembers asking him how he could stand to stay in Pflugerville when there was a whole world out there, and remembers his answer — that he was happy where he was and could not imagine a better place than home with his family. That is the town this company came out of.

A shop, a mail-order desk, and a trailer at the races

The record describes S&S in two slightly different ways, and both are probably right at different moments.

BMXmuseum calls it a bike shop. Supercross BMX, in its own published account of the era, calls it a BMX mail-order and vending trailer operation out of Texas. Put those together and you get the shape of a lot of regional BMX businesses in that period: a home base that sold parts, a mail-order catalog that reached riders who lived nowhere near it, and a trailer that got hitched up on a Friday and opened for business trackside on a Saturday. In a state the size of Texas, the trailer was not a gimmick. It was how you reached your customers.

Supercross BMX also records where S&S sat in its own story: when Supercross started up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, S&S was one of the very first Supercross BMX dealers. That is a small line in a product description, and it is also the kind of detail that gets lost forever if nobody writes it down. The brands everybody remembers were carried, early, by shops nobody remembers.

The S&S team

S&S did not just sell parts. It ran a team, and the team is the part people who were there tend to bring up first.

Ryan Sheehan was its founding member. Supercross BMX's account describes the S&S team as a crew that caused trouble all around the country, all in the name of fun and BMX — which is an affectionate description, not a complaint. The Sheehan family's own account of Ryan says his team toured all over the United States, Mexico and England. For a shop team out of Central Texas, that is a genuinely long reach.

Ryan's own chapter is here. The short version is that he raced from 1983, he was the reason the business existed, and the Texas BMX community named an award after him.

From selling parts to making them

The step that turns a shop into a manufacturer is usually the same step: you get tired of a part not existing, or not working, and you make your own.

That is what happened here. BMXmuseum's record of the company lists the products S&S started building in-house — Bitchin' Bolts for cranks, pedal cages, race gear and bags, and chainrings. The chainrings are the ones that mattered. They became Tiger Teeth, which grew into its own brand with its own name and its own following, and which is the reason most people who remember S&S remember S&S at all.

The push for it came from inside the family. Supercross BMX's account credits Ryan with talking his mother into starting Tiger Teeth to solve problems that professional riders and older amateurs were having with their bikes. Again — a rider identified a problem, and the family shop built the answer. It is the oldest pattern in BMX manufacturing and it did not stop being true just because it happened in Texas instead of Orange County.

And importing them

There is a third strand to what S&S did, and it is the one that shows how far a small operation's reach could go.

After the bolts and the chainrings, the family started bringing in JIVE panels from Ireland — number plates, or plate inserts, sourced from the other side of the Atlantic and sold into the American scene. Supercross BMX's published account of the era lists the import as the third thing the operation did.

The source was JIVE, a clothing and number plate label started in Belfast in the late 1980s by Will Smyth and the friends who went by the Jive Five. They cut plates by hand at night, sponsored the American rider Dave Clymer because he ran a Dead Kennedys sticker on his number plate, and gave the sport the word nac-nac.

This chapter used to hedge that identification, because no document named JIVE and S&S in the same place. It no longer needs to. Bill Ryan, who took delivery of one of the panels himself, states it firsthand: Michelle Sheehan imported the JIVE panels, and she was the one who got them out to riders. That is testimony, not paper, and it is the strongest kind — the person giving it was on the receiving end of the transaction.

There is now a dated document on the American end as well, though it proves a different thing. BMX Action's Probe column for March 1989, shot the previous October, printed the component list for Kevin Hull's customized Brackens and listed the number plate as a Jive Panel. That page proves the plates were here, on a real bike, at a fixed date. It says nothing about the route. The route comes from Ryan. Both strands are set out separately in the JIVE chapter.

Hold the picture in your head. A family shop outside Austin, working a trailer at Texas race tracks on a Saturday, was also running a supply line across an ocean — and the plates it landed ended up under the crowd that made BMX Action. Small does not mean unambitious.

Who made the S&S racewear

There is a third trade thread on this shop's record, and it runs back to the man who writes this library. TECH — the race pant brand Bill Ryan started in his bedroom at 15 in 1984 and ran through 1993 — made the S&S pants and jerseys. Ryan states it firsthand, and in September 2026, asked which of the two unrelated companies called S&S he had supplied, he named this one: the Sheehans' shop in Texas. That is testimony rather than documented trade record. No period invoice, catalog page or advertisement for the account has been located, and no years, no volumes and no terms are recorded, because none were given. Set beside Tiger Teeth and the JIVE import, it makes a third line of business running through one family shop outside Austin — parts of its own, plates from Ireland, and racewear cut and sewn in California.

Where S&S fits in the Texas scene

Texas BMX in the 1980s was big, well-organized and largely invisible to the California magazines. The state ran deep district and state series under the national sanctions, and it produced riders who could travel and win. The Texas Bicycle Motocross Hall of Fame now documents 79 inductees across racers, freestylers, track operators and industry contributors, sorted by region — Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso, Amarillo, Corpus Christi, Lufkin. That regional spread tells you how much scene there was.

S&S operated in the Austin region of that map. Riders already in this library from the same state and era include Kevin “Sheepdog” Hull, a Texas Hall of Fame inductee out of the Austin region, and Steve Veltman from the Houston region. The Amarillo A'me Pro Spectacular chapter covers what a Texas event could look like when the national spotlight did swing through.

Where the record runs thin

• A founding year and a closing year. The sources agree on a window — the 1980s into the early 1990s — and none of them give a date at either end.
• A street address, or whether there was a walk-in storefront at all. One source calls S&S a bike shop; another calls it mail-order and a vending trailer. We could not confirm a retail location, a city of record, or whether the operation changed shape over time.
• The exact form of her first name. Michelle Sheehan ran S&S, and Bill Ryan, who dealt with the shop directly, confirms she was Ryan's mother. The family's memorial site for Ryan uses Brenda, which may well be her formal first name. The relationship is settled; the naming note is on her page.
• The JIVE import. That Michelle Sheehan imported the panels and distributed them is settled, per Bill Ryan firsthand. What is still open is the shape of the business: the years it ran, the volume, how the panels were priced and sold, and whether S&S dealt with JIVE in Belfast directly or through somebody in between. No invoice, order form or catalog page has turned up.
• The TECH racewear account. That TECH made the S&S pants and jerseys is settled as to who, per Bill Ryan firsthand. Everything else about it is open — the years, the volume, the terms, and what the gear looked like. No invoice, catalog page or period photograph of S&S team gear has turned up.
• The S&S team roster beyond Ryan Sheehan. The team is described as touring the United States, Mexico and England. No rider list, no results, no team manager beyond the family survives in anything we could reach.
• Period advertising. We could not verify a single dated S&S or Tiger Teeth magazine ad. The oldschoolmags.com archive of BMX Plus! runs through 1989, and S&S's most active stretch appears to fall on the far side of that line.
• Whether S&S sponsored a track, a series, or held any sanctioning role. We found no evidence either way and are not assuming.

A note on sources, and an ask

BMXmuseum.com's reference entry on the S&S Tiger Teeth chainrings is the single most useful independent record of this company we located. It would not load directly for us — repeated attempts to fetch the page returned nothing — and what we have used from it came through search indexes carrying its text. We are flagging that rather than pretending we read the page cleanly. BMX Society's forums were checked and returned only a general sprocket identification thread.

If you raced for S&S, bought from the trailer, or have a catalog, an order form, a team shirt or a dated ad, that material is exactly what this chapter is missing. It can be sent through the contact page.

Sources

BMXmuseum.com — reference entry 4521, S&S Tiger Teeth Chainrings, identifying S&S as Sheehan & Sheehan Racing, a family-owned bike shop in the Round Rock / Pflugerville / Austin area active in the 1980s to early 1990s, started because the owner's son raced, and listing Bitchin' Bolts, pedal cages, race gear and bags, and chainrings among its own products (page not directly loadable; text obtained through search indexes). Supercross BMX, supercrossbmx.com — Tiger Teeth Ryan Sheehan Tribute Chainwheel product page, first-hand account of S&S as a Texas mail-order and vending trailer operation, one of the very first Supercross BMX dealers, run by Michelle Sheehan, with Ryan Sheehan as founding member of the S&S team, the origin of Tiger Teeth, and the published record of the JIVE panels imported from Ireland. Will Smyth interview, Deathless Avenue, July 2019, also carried by Profile Racing — source for JIVE as a Belfast BMX clothing and number plate label. BMX Action, Probe column, March 1989 — “The Sheep Dogmobile: Kevin Hull's Customized Brackens,” photographed October 1988; the printed component list carries the line “CLAMP PLATE: Jive Panel,” the one dated period document placing a JIVE plate on an American bike. Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX, firsthand, August 2026 — source for Michelle Sheehan being the person who imported the JIVE panels and got them out to riders, and for the panels running on bikes through the BMX Action circle. Both strands are set out separately in the JIVE chapter. Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX, firsthand, September 2026 — source for TECH having made the S&S pants and jerseys, and for the identification of this Texas shop, rather than the unrelated California S&S Performance, as the S&S he meant. Testimony, not documented trade record; no period invoice, catalog page or advertisement has been located, and no dates, volumes or terms were given or inferred. Texas Bicycle Motocross Hall of Fame, txbmxhof.org — Ryan Sheehan Spirit Award page and the Hall of Fame inductee index. rememberingryansheehan.com — the Sheehan family's memorial site for Ryan Sheehan, written by his sister Farren Smith, for the family's Pflugerville home and the team's touring range. Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX, 2026 — first-hand recollection that S&S came out of Pflugerville, Texas, that the Sheehans were influential in BMX, that Tiger Teeth started out of S&S, and of JIVE plates and panels reaching the American scene; and firsthand confirmation that Michelle Sheehan was Ryan Sheehan's mother. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked for period advertising and coverage; neither returned material specific to S&S Bikes or Tiger Teeth.

Last reviewed: September 2026. This chapter will be updated as additional source material becomes available.