1981 Giant/Repco Hotfoot.... Retro bike Rebuild

[madridingengineer]

Gday guys.

Well a couple of months ago i was cleaning out my shed and found a couple of old BMX's i had forgotten that i had, and being the horder that i am i decided to see if they were worth restoring insted of throwing out.

http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/show...ng-a-Retro-BMX

And with a bit of help from you rotorburn fellas i found out that one of the bikes is a 1981(30years old next year!!) Giant/repco hotfoot. I gave the other one to my foreman who has allways wanted a BMX with tufflites but never had one as a kid....

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So i began hunting round the net to get info/colour schemes and orignal parts for the hotfoot. I wanted to restore it to orignal condition(or close too) with out spending much money as i am one of those forever poor uni students. So im going to do all the work myself, which shouldnt be too bad.


I found some of the orignal advertising material for these bikes, So i decided to go with a dark blue frame with yellow forks and chrome everything else. I know thats not excatly what the picture shows but i like the idea of yellow forks better :D




I also managed to find a sticker block that is currently began made into stickers. Plus the yellow stickers on the frame will look good with the yellow forks.










According to the 'OZ BMX' forum this number means it was made by Giant in the 12month of 1981.....



Before being pulled apart



Random bits that i should be albe to pull apart and clean up. Im hoping that those handle bars will polish up nicely.



Wheels



Came with Araya BMX rims, the rims are in good condition but ive still deciding(money) weather to re spoke it or to just clean it up. The hub will be pulled right down and rebuilt either way.



Goodies from CRC
-Tioga comp 3's and tubes
-Tood stool grips

Still waiting on
-New chain
-Gold chain ring bolts



The thread on the forks was ok, most of the crap you can see was just dirt but there was some of the thread that was barley there. but 30 mins with a wire brush and the lathe at work had it looking mush better about 75%



Pulling the bike apart. Its an old habit from work to bag and label eveything in the order that it is pulled apart, makes sure you dont lose anything and makes reassembly sooooo much eaiser. The bearings in the headstem were also in pretty good nick too, the cups were also nice and smooth with no visable wear/pitting/rust ect



Stripping the paint. Whoever had done the paint before me had done a pretty good job. The paint was thick and there was even a nice base coat of etch primer under the top coat= no rust at all on the frame.



The forks all painted up after being primed. The gloss spary paint turned out very good after putting the cans in warm water for 10mins, the mist was allmost as fine as the 2pak paint we do at work with a compressor.



After about 2 hrs of paint stripping and sanding (120,180,240,300Grit) i managed to prime the frame. There are a couple of little dints i did my best to get out but im not going to be too worried about them. I think they add character and after all it is a budget build.



The Sugino 1 piece cranks were in very good condition, the threads were perfect and the bearings were still fill of grease, but there is a bit of surface rusr near the peadal i have to get rid of before i polish it.



Heres a couple of the frame all painted up. I used just cheapo enamel spray paint from bunnings, But i did spend awhile sanding it all back-priming it, sanding it back again, then rubbing it over with wax and grease remover to make sure the paint would sit right, also for those with a keen eye i put a thin layer of wheel bearing grease(so the paint dosent stick and i can just wipe it off and ive got a clean non paint contaminated bearing cup) in all the bearing cups partly beacause i wanted the lip of the cup to get paint and that would be hard to mask properly and secondly becasue is was quicker.






Hope you guys like it
Cheers
Riley

[kozlik9]

Very funky. Cant wait to see it built up.

[Five Miles Out]

Looks like a dam fun project! Keep us updated

[peachy]

Awesome thread man I'll be keeping my eye on this, love the paintjob too :)

[Lard]

I had a red hotfoot when I was a kid, that bike took a hell of a hammering around the local tracks in Bendigo. My twin brother also had a blue one :)

[r.ayres1]

Your spray job on the frame and forks looks awesome !! have you thought about re-chroming the h-bars or rims ? :)

[mxwill63]

Lookin good so far,

guessing its for your son/daughter;)

keep up the good job:)

[madridingengineer]

Your spray job on the frame and forks looks awesome !! have you thought about re-chroming the h-bars or rims ? :)

Thanks mate- im looking forward to get this bike rolling again. I would like to re chrome the handlebars but im not sure i can stretch my money that far. Ive polished them back today with some cut and polish and removed most of the rust and they are looking better, still not 100% though but we'll have to see.

Lookin good so far,
guessing its for your son/daughter
keep up the good job

Thanks, got a chuckle out of this though mate, ive got no little ones yet, im only 23(well at least none i know off :D ). I just like to keep myself busy with projects. Allthough giving your little one a bmx like this would be cool.

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Well i got a heap more work done on the bike today. Stripped, sanded, primed and painted the stem and the handle bar clamp. They were in pretty good nic, no rust or anything.

I also cleaned the headstem bearings and repacked them with some car wheel bearing grease i had lying around. So the forks are right to put back together once the paint goes off fully.



I also had a good at polishing(just normal car cut and polish) up the handlebars, they had some surface rust near the welds which scraped of with a razor blade and a fair few dints but for the most part they polished up well.

Before.


After



I also was going to get the seat recovered as the fabric and foam was rooted. But it seems that alot of bmx's then had plastic seats anyway. So i stripped the stuffed fabric and foam off the seat and started sanding it back.

Before




After

-This is roughly sanded back. The type of plastic/pvc didnt sand back well- it seemed to grain and little strips would come off it (kinda like fibreglass) so i primed/painted it anyway hoping that with some thick layers of paint and sanding back i will get a smoother finish.



Painted





I started cleaning up the other bits on the bike, the chainring,seat clamp,seat post and clamp etc etc. I was just going to sand them all back but i read somewhere on that 'OZ BMX' forum that soaking the parts in vinegar would help break down the rust. Aprently according to the internet it could work

http://www.ehow.com/how_2180904_remo...g-vinegar.html

So i spent $2 on vinegar and we will see how it goes.




Cheers
Riley

[nick_dales]

Looks so good dude, it'll be interesting to see if the Vinegar works

[madridingengineer]

Looks so good dude, it'll be interesting to see if the Vinegar works

Well i left the parts in the vinegar for about 20hrs and on a couple of the parts it worked awesome. The vinegar seemed to work really well on mild steel(no chrome or gal coating) and on the chrome it at least losened the rust to a point that it was easy to rub/polish off.

I did read that after using the vinegar you should at least spray some inox/wd40 etc on the parts to stop the residual vinegar from continuing to eat at the metal.

My new chain and chain ring bolts also finally rocked up from CRC so im hoping to have the crank all cleaned up and put on in the next couple of days.

Also im pretty sure ill get the wheels respoked, its just that ive gone to a fair bit of effort so far and having the wheels looking good would top it off (damm budget builds not being budget). So does anyone know of a fairly cheap gold coast local BMX wheel builder as a couple of the places i have rung have quoted me $200 :(:(


This is the seat post clamp before the vinegar.


This is the seat post clamp after



This is the seat post after the vinegar and a light polish with auto cut and polish.



Yeww new bits




This is where we are at now.



Cheers Riley