Technical & Reference Section > Tech and Restoration

New build, something a bit different.

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Avro:
This is going to be a slow build but posting a thread helps with motivation, and I rather like posting, so here goes! It is also one of three projects I have on the go, not quite sure how that happened it sort of just did.
 
I have had this lugged frame for some time, bought without much thought and on a whim really:
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My enthusiasm to build it has gone up and down like a yo-yo but I have now found a theme with which to play with. I am going to build a quirky rider with quirky parts; things I would never consider fitting but saying 'to hell with it, it's going on!'

After a lot of research I tracked it down. It is a 'Racergoose', a 'brand' that I believe was specific to asian markets. It shares many characteristics of similar brands like Apollo, KLM and and Scorpion. These bike are often dismissed out-of-hand as being low end, nasty and cheaply made; this is far from the case. Some were base models for sure but poorly made: no. Some of the bikes were quite high spec. In the thread linked below is a nos 'Racergoose' complete with Araya (steel) rims, Takagi three piece crank and Kashimax saddle and another similarly speced but with OGK wheels:
http://www.ozbmx.com.au/topic/7983-another-score-from-malaysia/#comment-1140465

I love the way the Aussie scene has a foot in both worlds, the West and the East.

The sticker on the frame top tube, near the seat mast does state that the bike is High Tensile steel but there were other varients of the Racergoose that were chro-mo. The lugged ones are high tensile, the chro-mo ones welded.

I wanted to see how good the lug work was so another victory for Synstrip ensued and:
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Not bad at all. Plenty of brass, soldering fully filling all the joints. Also the tubes are fully inserted into the lugs. This is well made. I keep mentioning this because it grates on me when reading threads that scoff at bikes like this. There is nothing cheap about making a lugged frame. All it is horses for courses, bikes for different markets. One thing that does irk me a little is the rip-off decals which ape Mongoose in style, colours and, of course, name. Not sure how am going to deal with that later on, I will have to ponder on it.

Avro:
...the ARX fork has been snaffled by another build. This bike is getting pinched TX1200's. I traded for a set on Rad recently. The reason for wanting these is that I bought a set brand new in Halfords bitd. Those were chrome and no one else had a set.

Here is the state of play of the project today; in primer because I do not know when I will be able to get it in to paint nor do I know if it will be powdered or sprayed. The original colour appears to have been a metallic blue over a very thin grey primer. At some point this was spayed over with a bright red and finally blow over white which only served to disguise areas of surface rust.
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More soon I hope.

Avro:
Opps! Put in the wrong section.
Couls a mod. please move this to rest+tech, thank you

griff:
 :daumenhoch:

MartyC:
It shares the same tube set, lugs and jigs from Tange as the Scorpion, main difference between these (and the Malvern Star,  Apollo, KLM, etc.) are that Scorpion made their frames using Mangalloy whereas a lot of the others used high tensile steel and they were made in Chatsworth CA and not in Japan/Taiwan.

Out of curiosity how much does it weigh?  I have both a Scorpion TX frame and an almost identical Malvern Star frame and the weight difference is huge with the Malvern Star frame weighing much more than the Scorpion.  Also, Scorpion serial numbers are stamped on the seat post tube whereas the non Scorpion frames are stamped on the gusset, rear dropout or BB.

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