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ACS 'Blood, Sweat and Z-48's' Advert rep Build Thread

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McQUEEN:
Guys, back on this now....and starting the build thread from the concept...

This build comes after completing some pretty stock builds in ‘17 - a Catalogue 85 Haro Master, a yellow GT Pro Performer‎ and an Eddie Fiola Cherry Red GT Pro World Tour - none of which, whilst great builds to have in my little piece of BMX Freestyle museum, really excited me (except the neon green Master. And the yellow Performer. And the Fiola rep!).

I'm always collecting frame and fork sets when I see them come up and can afford them, so I have a few lined up at home, but none really fired me up to build them - in the main, they look so good just as framesets, unless I could do something really special with them, I felt it was best just to leave them and admire them until something sparked an idea of a build or money allowed....

I'd been looking around the forums here and in USA while I was building my GHP Trix but couldn't really see anything that was either available within budget (I really wanted to build a Free-Agent Freeflight) or again that fired me up that I didn't have.

Whenever I have a bit of spare time I'd flick through the pages of Freestylin’ magazine for inspiration up to the end of when I stopped riding, which was the end of 85/early 86. Once I stopped riding I stopped buying all the BMX mags as well – but since I've been back in the scene I've also targeted to complete my collection of Freestylin’ magazine and that's where the idea for this build came from, inside cover of the December 86 edition.

McQUEEN:
The ACS advert grabbed my attention straight away - firstly, the colours - in the main, the vivid blue bike with white decals and accent parts, the blue sky and the sea – it just summed up California and freestyling / BMX riding for me. Secondly, the forks – the freestyle versions of Landing Gear, one of my favourite parts, and thirdly, the trick - A Miami Hopper, which was the last trick I learnt‎ before hanging up my Vans, and lastly the advert, it looked so rad, not corny like some of the adverts of the time – moody teens, neon lighting, breakdancers, hi tops and teenage girls with tight perms and pop socks straight out of Pretty in Pink!

McQUEEN:
So, the bike.....

The bike as Fred Blood rode is really a mutant made up of an 85 SE Quadangle frameset with Landing Gear freestyle forks‎ and parts from, in the main, a 85 GT Pro Freestyle Tour. With ACS parts added in for the advert. Pretty cool really, none of us ran stock catalogue bikes bitd.

The Quadangle frame is an ’85 chromoly version, where the rear down tubes continue past the seat mast onto middle of upper tubes. This is my favourite shape of the Quad, the earlier models that have the rear down tubes welded into the seat mast gives the Quad a ‘too high’ look for me. This is more like most of the bikes of the era which had lower seat mast tubes. Interestingly, in ’86, it looked like SE had dropped the Quad Freestyler from their range – we all know freestyle wasn’t dying away, perhaps the Quad Freestyler just wasn’t selling well at the time – there certainly was lots of competition in the market at that time.

The forks are the freestyle version of the SE Landing Gear forks, where SE welded the fork leg off-cuts from the bottom onto the tops to make little platforms - hardly usable for any trick, the balance position is way off, but look so frigging strong. As a note, I always thought they were called Standing Gears, but I’ve never seen any decals showing that.

The ACS parts where the Z48s, ACS Freecoaster, ACS Rotor and locking freestyle levers.

The GT Pro Performer parts were the GT Freestyle Bars, Gen 1 front and rear standers, seat post and seat clamp and GT Shinko tyres. Awesome in blue.

Dia-compe and Suntour make up most of the rest....

In2bmx:
Looking forward to seeing this done  :4_17_5:

McQUEEN:
[ Attachment: You are not allowed to view attachments ]

So, here's the frame and fork set back from SBD. I lined it up against the 84 Quad Freestyler to show what I was saying re seat mast height and rear down tube positions.

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