Great to see another pit turn up. Here's mine....
In 1984, when RRS came up with idea of putting a 16” rear wheel on a full sized bike (the RRS 20/16), a friend of mine decided to try and build one himself, so needed to build up a 16” rear wheel. A 16” Araya was sourced, and the bike was built.
He raced it at one race meeting (a super tight indoor track where everyone geared down to 40-16) and did really well – so of course it was immediately banned.
The wheel was then put aside….
My friend was working at Burkes Cycles (in NZ) when they brought in this Super LA Pit Bike Frame and Fork. He still had the 16” wheel, so the decision was made to build up the bike. In true Pit Bike fashion it became a combination of some trick new-at-the-time parts (DK Stem, DiaCompe Nippon brakes with a Tech 6 lever and ODI “Tommy Brackens” Signature grips), a few bits that were sitting around for a while and hadn’t sold (KKT Pedals, DiaCompe seatpost clamp and Powerlite bars), and to round it off some road cranks that they couldn’t get rid of.
I was riding for the shop at the time, and we used to take it to race meetings to play around with, but Pit Bike racing had all but died, so it got put to one side after a short time.
A couple of years on, my friend wanted a cruiser, I had a spare one, so a swap was done and I owned a Pit Bike. When I moved to Australia a little while after that, the bike came with me. Knox BMX Club used to run 16” races at its clubbies, so the bike started to get a bit more use. The original road cranks, pedals, bars and grips were taken off and some other more modern parts were put on, and all the “old” parts put in a box. In 2002, I sold it to another club member – I was moving back to NZ, and his kids wanted a little bike to ride around on. The box of “old” parts were bundled up with all my other possessions and shipped back to NZ.
Fast forward to last year…. I moved back to Victoria, and joined Knox BMX Club again. The club member I sold the bike to was still there, and mentioned he still had the bike, but since his kids had grown up now it was just at the back of the shed. I still somehow had the box of “old” parts (they had moved back to Australia again with all my household stuff), so I offered to buy the bike back. “No problem, you can have it for what you sold it to me for – the kids have had plenty of fun with it, but it’s a bit of a mess now”. As it turned out, a bit of a mess only meant a fair amount of mud and dirt, and a few scratches on the stickers.
Out came the box of old parts, a good clean of everything, and it ended up as it is now – exactly the same as the day it was originally put together. The only changes have been 2 new tyres (as far as I know it’s still got the original tubes!), and new inner brake cable. Everything, with the exception of the brake lever which needed a new coat of paint (it’s always been white), came up with basic cleaning and polishing.
. Monkeybiscuits. haha