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Technical & Reference Section => Tech and Restoration => Topic started by: renegaderacer on January 17, 2018, 09:48 PM
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After a few years out of the game, I'm back with my first racer build! People with long memories may remember my red and blue colour-coded Falcon Pro Aero Flyer or the Ace racing T.I.T.S build?
I've been itching to do a build for some time but needed to justify it to the missus when I thought 'why don't I build my nephew his first bmx?'. As the missus will do anything for him, it was the easiest green light I've ever had! :LolLolLolLol:
If you've seen my other builds you'll notice I tend not to build the bikes most people would choose so I scoured the Bay and came up with this little beauty, a Hawk Scorcher XL. I don't know much about these apart from they were sold in Woolworths in the early 80's for about 80 quid. All the ones on the Museum seem a bit older than this so I'm thinking this may be around '85 although I'll never really know as they didn't feel it good enough to stamp a serial number on!
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Here are a few more pics of loveliness.....
It is the cheapest thing I've ever seen and was clearly welded at 4.59pm on a Friday! It does have some 'names' on it though.
* Acorn Magnum wheels
* Thun cranks
* San Marco seat
Mostly, it's rubbish though.
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I stripped it all down which all went well despite the rust until I got to the stem which was the biggest bugger to shift ever and I had to eventually drill it out. I thought I'd be able to save the chrome so I started to clean it up...
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Proper Old School that!! Looks like a fun project, and a green light from the Mrs always helps! :daumenhoch:
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I now needed a new stem so got a tidy SR off eBay nice and cheap and polished it up. This is going to be a rider and not a show pony so I left the odd scratch on the stem as it's going to far more of them when it's ridden. I also polished up the seat clamp which came with the bike.
I then bought three piece cranks as I always like to try and prove that you can polish a turd! I couldn't afford the fancy high end build cranks so I got some cheap SR Royal road bike arms and polished them up and then bought and polished a Sugino Mighty Competition chainring and got a YST bottom bracket.
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Proper Old School that!! Looks like a fun project, and a green light from the Mrs always helps! :daumenhoch:
Cheers, it has certainly made my life a lot easier, especially with Christmas falling bang in the middle of it! :LolLolLolLol:
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I was after a set of wheels and originally I wanted to go red so was looking at Night Burner wheels and the like but everything seemed too much to me, then I saw the perfect set. Well, ok, they were blue but they were different, they were English like the bike and they carried my surname, so I had to have them! I got myself a nice set of Spencer rimmed wheels. When they came, the chrome in the middle of the hubs was badly pitted and as I stripped the wheels to rebuild them, the rear hub literally fell apart and neither were anywhere near round. I had already shiney sided the rims and decided to build them up anyway as I needed the practice having never built wheels before.
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As the bike is a rider I got repop Comp 3 tyres and MKS pedals to complement.
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For the handlebars, I wanted something old school racer style but without the cost and saw these bars off a Raleigh Grifter XL which looked the part and were only about £15. What I didn't realise until I got them was that they're actually Nitto bars so that's even better. The brakes were again a cheap set of Raleigh Night Burner items I stripped and polished.
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I found a set of hubs of similar size to mine, both NOS and stamped 1984 and with 10mm axles. The front is Shimano and the rear is Malliard or however you spell it. I polished them up and re-laced the wheels. There's actually something very calming with lacing wheels but far less with truing them up!
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A couple more wheel pics.....
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By this stage I had given up on the idea of keeping the bike chrome as it was just too far gone. I contacted Dan and after sending him pics of the mess he said he could rescue it, so it was shipped off to him asap. When he sent me pictures of how it came out it looked great but that was nothing compared to how it looked in the flesh when I unwrapped it! I had it powdered Ripper blue and I think it looks the business. Dan did an amazing job to fix all the dents and pitting before he powdered it.
Del came through and did a great job as usual replicating the original decals too.
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The finishing touch was a custom set of pads in blue from Steve and they look amazing on the bike and really finish it off. I've got a race plate for it with my motorcycle racing number on it which I want to fit at some time but when I put the pads on I couldn't bring myself to cover them up with the plate!
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Some more pics.......
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That's a lovely POS. :LolLolLolLol: :daumenhoch:
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Yeah,you've done a really good resto there. Your nephew will be well made up. Just make sure you get him a lock for it. :daumenhoch:
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You've done a cracking job and good choice of blue as it makes the decals stand out.
It now looks to good to use lol
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So there you have it, a complete build thread in one hit! :LolLolLolLol:
There are a few more things I forgot to mention like the NOS AME mini grips (he only has little hands!), the 1984 Diamondback Viper seat clamp I stripped and polished and the white Dia Compe brake blocks to name a few. Oh yeh, I found out it takes an ISO sized headset instead of a normal BMX one which of course I only found out once I'd bought the wrong one!
Here's a quick run down of the pats I can remember:
* 1984/5 ish Hawk Scorcher XL frame and forks, powdercoated PK Ripper baby blue by SBD
* Spencer rims, shiney sided and laced to polished NOS 1984 Shimano front and Maillard rear hubs
* SR Royal crank arms, polished with polished Sugino Mighty Competition 44t chainring and YST bb
* Repop MKS pedals
* Repop Tioga Comp 3 tyres 2.15 fr, 1.75 r
* Original Suntour 16t freewheel cleaned up
* Izumu chain
* Tange Seiki ISO sealed headset
* Raleigh Grifter XL Nitto handlebars
* NOS AME mini grips
* Raleigh Night Burner brake levers and calipers stripped and polished
* Dia Compe brake cables
* Dia Compe white brake blocks
* SR stem, polished
* Layback seatpost swapped for straight one as he's not that tall!
* Original San Marco saddle cleaned up
* 1984 Diamondback Viper seat clamp, stripped and polished
* Replica decals by Del
* Custom pads by Steve
* NOS Landar plate with NOS Falcon Pro numbers and a mixture of NOS and repop decals
MASSIVE thanks to Dan, Del and Steve, without whom, none of this would've been possible! :4_17_5:
Being a freestyle man at heart I have to say I really enjoyed this POS racer build and have clearly spent way too much time, effort and money on this bike but when I hand it over to my nephew and see the look on his face; it'll all be worth it! :daumenhoch:
Hope you enjoyed the build and I'm sure there'll be more to come now.
Cheers,
Giles
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That's a lovely POS. :LolLolLolLol: :daumenhoch:
You've done a cracking job and good choice of blue as it makes the decals stand out.
It now looks to good to use lol
Yeah,you've done a really good resto there. Your nephew will be well made up. Just make sure you get him a lock for it. :daumenhoch:
Cheers guys! :daumenhoch:
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Very Nice :4_17_5:
Love that Blue :daumenhoch:
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Very Nice :4_17_5:
Love that Blue :daumenhoch:
Thanks. Yeh, Dan really nailed it with that paintjob! :)
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Cracking coulor mate, really like that :4_17_5:
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Bloodyhell that was quick! Didn’t realise when I first posted that you’d be done and dusted in a day!! ;D
Bike looks great. That frame colour is always a winner, and the Grifter/Nitto bars were a real find, but the effort that you put in is reflected in the result - top turd-polishing skills!! :4_17_5: If your nephew doesn’t appreciate that then disown the little blighter!! :2gunsfiring_v1:
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Cracking coulor mate, really like that :4_17_5:
Thanks mate :daumenhoch:
Bloodyhell that was quick! Didn’t realise when I first posted that you’d be done and dusted in a day!! ;D
Bike looks great. That frame colour is always a winner, and the Grifter/Nitto bars were a real find, but the effort that you put in is reflected in the result - top turd-polishing skills!! :4_17_5: If your nephew doesn’t appreciate that then disown the little blighter!! :2gunsfiring_v1:
Thanks for the complement and glad you like it. When I started off I thought it would be more of a decent clean up job of what was already there but one thing led to another and well, you know how it goes! :LolLolLolLol:
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Fantastic job, what a transformation! Great to see the lower end bikes being saved. Get a bit bored of seeing the same old high end bikes, same colour schemes etc. (People spending more on bikes than I spend on a car!) Restoration is where my heart is but that's just me, i'm always restoring something. Good work, bet you're well chuffed on how it turned out :daumenhoch:
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Fantastic job, what a transformation! Great to see the lower end bikes being saved. Get a bit bored of seeing the same old high end bikes, same colour schemes etc. (People spending more on bikes than I spend on a car!) Restoration is where my heart is but that's just me, i'm always restoring something. Good work, bet you're well chuffed on how it turned out :daumenhoch:
Cheers mate, I appreciate the feedback and glad you like it. :daumenhoch:
I think we're definitely on the same wave length here. I like a high end build as much as the next man but there's something special (some might say special needs!) about saving a low end bike. They have their place in bmx history and deserve to be saved as much as any Haro/GT/Mongoose etc.... Plus, like you, I love restoring things and choosing something not many other people would choose just makes it more of a challenge for me. Couldn't be more pleased how it turned out.
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Great job, nice to see an individual taste applied.
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Great job, nice to see an individual taste applied.
Cheers :daumenhoch:
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Excellent job,great satisfaction from a build like this :daumenhoch: looks good fella :4_17_5:
plus the nephew will be stoked and the brownie points from the mrs you can turn into certain favours lol ;)
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Excellent job,great satisfaction from a build like this :daumenhoch: looks good fella :4_17_5:
plus the nephew will be stoked and the brownie points from the mrs you can turn into certain favours lol ;)
Cheers mate. :daumenhoch:
I'm really pleased with it and I know my nephew will love it although I don't want to push my luck too far with the missus! :LolLolLolLol:
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Giles, that's a great job you've done there and a great thread, thanks for sharing it with us.
Glad to see your username again. The last build from you that I remember was the grey Falcon Pro with the mix of blue and red parts, right ???
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Giles, that's a great job you've done there and a great thread, thanks for sharing it with us.
Glad to see your username again. The last build from you that I remember was the grey Falcon Pro with the mix of blue and red parts, right ???
Thanks and glad you like it. :daumenhoch:
I have to hold my hands up to the Falcon Pro, although it was chrome with red and blue. Afraid I went a bit overboard with that one! The last build I did I believe was the Concord Freestyle.
I've got another build to do now as one of my mates has got the bug after seeing me build this one and wants me to restore a bike for him so look out for a mid school build coming soon!
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It is the whole package that looks the danglies.
:bow:
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Cracking :daumenhoch:
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It is the whole package that looks the danglies.
:bow:
Cracking :daumenhoch:
Cheers guys! :daumenhoch:
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Cracking resto and a great thread. Nice one mate :daumenhoch:
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Cracking resto and a great thread. Nice one mate :daumenhoch:
Cheers mate, glad you like it. :daumenhoch:
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Good job :daumenhoch: can I ask what you are doing with the Brevetto seatclamp is it for sale?
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That's a really nice build in a great combo. :daumenhoch:
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Good job :daumenhoch: can I ask what you are doing with the Brevetto seatclamp is it for sale?
Cheers! :daumenhoch:
I was keeping the seat clamp in case I needed it in the future but will sell it to you if you want it. However, it's not as good as it looks in the pics. There is still some visible rust marks on the top (hidden in the pic) which is why I didn't use it on the build. I'll put some more pics up of it and if you're still interested, throw me an offer. ;)
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That's a really nice build in a great combo. :daumenhoch:
Cheers mate! :daumenhoch:
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I'm interested in the clamp if you have some more pictures please.
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I'm interested in the clamp if you have some more pictures please.
Here are some more pics of the clamp....
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....and some more