Practically brand new Whyte JW4!

So a casual late night eBay search on Saturday lead me down an unexpected path to a piece of treasure.

For a long time I'm fancied a PRST4 and have chased a few and it not worked out, then this weekend I came across a JW4 with a story that intrigued me enough to take a punt and just buy it - when I went to collect it I discovered that to all intents and purposes the bike was over 14 years old and basically brand new!

It was bought new, ridden for a London to Brighton, ridden couple of other times and put in the garage and forgotten about, pulled out a coupe of weeks ago and then due to fitness the owner decided to buy an e-bike instead!

As far as I can tell it's probably not been ridden more than a handful of times and has less than 75 miles on it - it's absolutely minty fresh and showroom shiny!

It's not 100% original as from the shop it had a different saddle fitted and terrible horrible Ergon grips, also somewhere along the way another family member pinched the pedals - but I did get all the original paperwork and sales receipt too.

I am absolutely delighted, after all these years of wanting one so long after production I've managed to buy a "new" one

Lucky man! It's a tragedy that the concept didn't carry on. My JW4 had a saddle unlike any other I've seen. Your stem looks the same but I'm not sure about the saddle itself. My saddle had a plastic strip about half an inch wide underneath which the stem clamped on to. In over six years I never had to touch it!
Those grips are shockingly offensive. My bike wasn't supplied with pedals so I think you can use what you like from the period and still be authentic. I still have an IRC Mythos XC tyre. It seemed perfect then but now seems a little lacking.
Best advice for shock pressures is body weight in pounds rear and 75% of that in the front. It may seem stiff but if you allow anything more than a tiny amount of sag the anti bob system doesn't work, especially at the front. With these pressures set I still get full compression on big hits.
Enjoy.
Here's my current JW4.

….and my PRST4!

In which case maybe the saddle IS original on mine, I had to do a little research - it's an SDG I-beam which I would describe as being exactly the same as yours, I've never seen anything like it before either but it works really well!

Maybe he just had the shop change the colour then as I can't imagine the urban camo look was standard? What colour was yours?

Funky bikes in a 'makes your eyes bleed' kind of way!

What's the difference between the models?

Google image them for pictures, but my understanding of the basic rundown is:
PRST1 - the original "PReSTon" - quad linkage front end with dual linkage rear end, "plus fours" forks made with flat folded welded sections. Innovative stuff like the "big gripper" QR's on the wheels etc.
PRST4 - same "plusfours" front forks but quad link "virtual pivot" rear end - same "big grippers"
JW2 - dual pivot rear, cheaper to manufacture tubular "T-fours" fork using the same quad link, conventional drop outs so no big grippers
JW4 - same "T-fours" quad link front, but with the quad link rear end from the PRST4 - same conventional dropouts.

I think the PRST1's or some models may have had magnesium main triangles at launch but were replaced with alloy due to longterm durability

I think the entire range were only manufactured from around 1999 to 2004 - early models had canti studs, later ones were disc only - all the main frames were basically the same with the "trim" being sorted through the equipment spec'ed on it.

Sweet, thanks for the info! My mate had a couple of quad link Marin’s and I always found the design interesting.

I honestly can't remember what my saddle looked like, only that it had that groovy way of fixing. I'd guess yours is original.
The PRSTs all have Big Grippers. They make a 9mm axle stiff like a through axle before such things were available. The JWs are a quick release like any other bike of the time. You get the box section fork on the PRST. My PRST4 has Fox shocks but the JW has X Fusion, which are noisier.
The PRST1 had a single pivot with a swinging arm which went under and over the BB. The "2"s had a Marin like single pivot and the "4"s had the virtual pivot point, which was way ahead of its time. The earlier ones often had a coil over front shock which you need to give loads of preload to make the anti bob work. The parts were obviously of higher spec (up to XTR) on the PRSTs.
I love the look of them. They're an engineers MTB rather than a cycling enthusiasts idea.
Remember a Whyte PRST/JW isn't just for Christmas, it's for life!

SDG i-Beam
https://sdgcomponents.com/collections/i-beam-1

Never really took off. The early saddles were like sitting on a lightly padded girder (sprung rails acted like a spring, who would have guessed, replacing it with an i-beam was, um, like sitting on a girder....)

By the time they'd sorted that, everyone had given up on them. Weren't particularly light either from what i can remember.
Think they had an issue with them cracking as well, but it was 20 years ago, so i might be misremembering that!

This, I've always thought they were amazing...


...and THIS