I'd never heard of GJS until I saw Kappy's '85 Freestyler at MK a few years ago. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to find one, although I didn't start looking seriously until last year as I had other builds on the go.
Although there were an estimated 12 prototypes made, the general production framesets were only made for 2 years, 1984 and 85. The 1984 model has round chainstay tubing, but I was drawn to the 1985 model as the chainstays are square. '84's are more common than '85's, although both are very rare. Exact production numbers are unknown, but it's generally accepted/estimated that only about 200-300 freestylers were made over the two years before GJS went out of business sometime in 1985. There are only 2 other square chainstay freestylers (apart from mine) on bmxmuseum.com, and a few others on the GJS facebook owners group. I think there are about 6-7 documented worldwide. After putting wanted ads up on here and bmx museum with no luck, and missing out on one on ebay over a year ago, I put a wanted ad up on the facebook GJS owners group. Unbelievably within an hour, someone in Philadelphia contacted me and said he had an '85 frame & fork that he would consider selling. The deal was done, and here's how the frame & forks arrived.
I was pretty sure the paint/powder job wasn't the original finish, plus it had a few chips and the frame had a few dings and wear to the dropouts that needed sorting out. I therefore cracked open the hard stuff and got to work stripping the frameset
I then took the frameset to Geoff Haslam in Warrington who did a superb job of sorting out the dings in the frame and building up the chewed dropouts. I then gave the whole thing a good sanding down, ready to go to Superbike Dan for paint
F = Freestyle
I believe the serial numbers started at 100, so in reality would be frame number 221. Numbers were sequential with no date code.
Details on what colour options were available for these framesets is lacking, but there is a pink one (an '84) on bmx museum. 1984/1985 was the start of pinks/oranges/greens and lavender being used, especially with the
in freestyle. I happened to see a can of pink spray in Wilkinsons, and thought the colour looked pretty good.
I wanted the colour to be darker than Hutch pink, as I felt like doing this build in the same colour would make it too similar to a Hutch Trickstar, of which there are already a few amazing examples in pink (Benno and Adam) to name but two
Although Joff and myself talked about spraying the frame ourselves, I had the prize of a free paint/powder job from Superbike Dan following my VDC Changa winning a prize sponsored by SBD at MK last year. I've used Dan before, knew his work was second to none, and was interested to meet the man himself and see where the magic happens. Myself and Ant factory pilot therefore decided to do a crazy 512 mile round trip to drop the frames off. Me with the GJS and Ant with his SE Quad...
Here's the thread for those who haven't seen it
http://www.radbmx.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,186809.msg1876219.html#msg1876219By this time, i'd collected a few parts for the build including a NOS pink shot gun II seat
other parts included pink dia compe brake cables and some NOS pink ODI Mushroom grips. The cables looked fine, but the grips were far too 'day glo' and were an obvious colour clash, so they had to go
I thought that matching pink would be fairly easy, but I quickly realised that this wasn't the case. I managed to get some bubble font A'Me tri and round grips, but both of these were different shades, and weren't a perfect match for the other components. This photo is a bit misleading - the colours are very different in the flesh
We took the seat, cables, grips and spray can to SBD's to decide on the colour. I thought that matching the colour to the spray can would give a tone somewhere between the seat and cables, to balance out the overall colour. There wasn't an off the shelf powder colour that was suitable, so Dan said he'd have to get the colour matched to the spray paint, and do it in 2k wet spray. Dan sent me some photos of the frameset and I was really pleased with his work. I couldn't wait to get the frame back
Dan's work is amazing, and although I was pleased with the colour, I was a little underwhelmed. It looked good, but didn't blow me away.
The colour seemed 'cold', and was edging towards the lavender/violet scale instead of a warm pink. My suspicions were confirmed when I put the frame next to the parts, and there was a bad clash
I took at over to Joff's to ask his honest opinion - He said it looked good...
..but good wasn't good enough. It had to be perfect.
So I got on the phone to SBD and explained the colour clash. He said that trying to get exact colour matches can be difficult, and is very subjective. I'd now realised that the colour I wanted was the colour of the seat. This was confirmed randomly when I was doing the washing up and saw the colour of my gloves - a lovely shade of pink. SBD therefore told me to go to a local car paints store and get the colour matched to the seat, and to double check it before approving it
The frame, forks, pedals and stand were all sent back to SBD for a re-spray. I sent the seat too, just so he could check the colour as it was going on. As soon as he sent me some photos, I knew we'd cracked it. The colour was exactly what i'd imagined
Dan's communication and service was amazing. He is really passionate about what he does, and is determined to leave his customers happy. He certainly did that. The colour and finish are amazing.
**I must point out that in no way was the original colour a fault of Dan's. It was just one of those things that can happen if you've ever tried to match colours. It's a nightmare!
I wanted to go with a colour scheme of pink, chrome and hint of black, so I asked Del to do me some chrome on clear decals
Decals on. The photos really don't do the colour justice, and it looks different depending on the light. I love it.
part 2 coming soon...
