A BMXRacingHistory.com chapter · hosted on Legend Bike Co

Wheels N' Things

Sandy Finkelman's Shop and the WT Racer

Some shop owners raced. Some sold parts. Sandy Finkelman did both and then went and ran two of BMX's biggest factory teams besides. Before any of that, he had a shop in El Cajon, California with its own frame, built by the same company that was about to make him famous for managing somebody else's team.

The shop and the man

Wheels N' Things was a bike shop in El Cajon, California, in the San Diego area, owned by Sandy Finkelman — born Samuel E. Finkelman, March 30, 1947, died November 22, 2005. Finkelman managed the Wheels N' Things BMX team from 1973 into the late 1970s, a program that helped launch the careers of Eddy King, his brother Mike King, Doug Davis, and the Hudson brothers. As covered on Legend Bike Co's own Bike Shops That Made BMX chapter, Finkelman went on to become team manager of the Torker factory team in 1979, and then, in 1980, took over the Diamond Back program for Western States Imports — stepping in after Dennis at Europa Bikes in Van Nuys stopped working with the importer, and becoming Diamond Back's original team manager and head of product development. He built Diamond Back's 1981 national team, is credited with naming the Silver Streak two hours before its public debut at a San Diego race, and won Diamond Back an ABA number-one factory team title in 1982 along with three NORA Cups. A shop guy, twice over, building two of the sport's great teams.

The WT Racer

Before the Torker and Diamond Back years, the shop had its own frame: the WT Racer. Documented examples run 1979 to 1980, sold in small numbers — one surviving frame carries the serial number 0004. Bill Ryan's firsthand account is direct about what it was: a single-top-tube Torker, sharing the same gussets, the same dropouts, and the same geometry as Torker's own frames, because Torker built it (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026).

The record backs that up almost word for word. A documented 1980 WT Racer on BMXmuseum.com is captioned plainly: "Wheels N Things frame and forks built by Torker for Sandy Finkleman... It's basically a Torker with a single top tube and an early Torker mini fork." That's independent confirmation of the core fact — Torker as the builder, single top tube as the tell — though the specific detail that the gussets and dropouts matched Torker's own frames tube for tube is Bill Ryan's addition to the record, not something the museum listing itself spells out. Both are given here, and they agree with each other everywhere they overlap.

The surviving example was built with period-correct parts of the kind a shop like Wheels N' Things would have had on hand: a Tange headset, an unstamped Tuf-Neck stem, Cook Bros. Pro bars, Shimano Dura-Ace cranks, Weinmann rims on Suntour hubs, and a Torker sealed bottom bracket — the last detail being one more small, direct link back to the frame's actual builder.

Wheels N' Things also sold a Pro model documented from 1980. Beyond the WT Racer and the Pro, the shop's full catalog isn't documented anywhere located for this page — an open question rather than a guess.

A contract build, not a rebadge

Worth being precise about this, the way The Bike Shops That Made BMX chapter draws the line: the WT Racer wasn't somebody else's overstock frame with a Wheels N' Things decal slapped over another brand's gusset, the way some Hustler frames were. It was a frame Torker built to order, under the Wheels N' Things name, sharing Torker's own construction down to the dropouts. That puts the WT Racer in the same category as Hank & Frank's FORCE — both purpose-built contract frames — and in the same broader tradition as the job-shop work Voris Dixon Company did on the other coast, building frames and parts under other companies' names.

Where Wheels N' Things sits in the story

Wheels N' Things isn't remembered today for the WT Racer. It's remembered because the man behind the counter went on to run two factory teams that shaped the sport's biggest years. But the shop's own house frame is the part of the story that's easy to lose — a San Diego-area bike shop with a team to outfit, and a Fullerton frame builder willing to put that shop's name on a frame built exactly like its own. The same builder, the same basic arrangement, twice over, in two different corners of the country — that's the thread running through this shop, Hank & Frank, and Speed Unlimited.

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Sources

BMXmuseum.com — Wheels N' Things brand page (bmxmuseum.com/bikes/wheels_n_things), stating the shop's El Cajon, California location and that "Sandy Finkelman collaborated with Johnson Engineering (also known as Torker BMX) to produce the Wheels 'N Things WT Racer frames"; the 1980 Wheels N' Things WT Racer listing (bmxmuseum.com/bikes/wheels_n_things/49398, serial 0004), read in full for this page, including the full parts listing and the builder caption quoted above; BMXmuseum.com Reference 7433, "Sandy Finkleman," for biographical dates and his Wheels N' Things, Torker, and Diamond Back team management history; BMXmuseum.com Reference 7434, "1979 Team Torker," confirming the Wheels N' Things/Torker Team management window. Legend Bike Co, The Bike Shops That Made BMX, for the existing, previously published account of Finkelman's shop and team-manager history. Oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked for period Wheels N' Things / WT Racer material; no additional primary test coverage was located for this page. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026 — the WT Racer's construction as a single-top-tube Torker sharing Torker's gussets, dropouts, and geometry.