Cooked Goose

[CDBMX]

Back on the 8th of January nlast year a bike shop burned down in a nearby regional city. Upstairs among many bike shop related goods were two vintage BMX. One was the 1978 Quicksilver that is the subject of another thread, & the shop owners childhood 1978 Mongoose Motomag.

This is how it looked before the fire.
Alloy bars, gold stem, suntour seat post clamp & VX cranks, Team fork etc. etc.
The Motomags were not in it at the time of the fire but were a few feet away. None the less they became just a blob of alloy on the ground. The installed wheelset was a Shimano DX & Araya 7X combination. Almost nothing left of them either



I have been asked to restore it. This is what I have to start with. It's dated June 1978 [CF8] but would have been bought new for Xmas of '78 & like pretty much all raced BMX's, it got a few upgrades during it's race career. I will build it with a mix of new, restored, & pre-loved components, but not as a catalogue build.

This is what I have to start with. Wish me luck.

[MartyC]

That's going to be a tough one to restore, although Warren Eales probably has most of what you will need!

[CDBMX]

Yes, I have met Waza & have bought stuff from him before.
 
I already have about half of the parts I need & more are on their way. I am tossing up over whether to use the Dura Ace cranks [standard on the Team model], Ashtabula, or Mongoose stamped OPC. I'll let the owner of the bike decide.

The hardest part so far is to get the frame checked for true alignment & then re-nickle plated. I am negotiating over a painted Mongoose competition fork at the moment & will need to hold off on the frame job untill have a fork, then electroplate them both together.

The wheelset is organised but I will need to get the hubs re-anodised, then we will build them into a new pair of Araya 7X [replica] rims.

The steel parts of the Gold Stem survived but the alloy parts did not. I have new clamps, bolts & a sticker for it so restoring the steel part will get me a nice new looking stem. Bars are a minor hang-up at the moment, but nothing that can't be overcome.

While rounding up bits for this one I also come across stuff for my own 1977 Goose so that's a bonus. This one will be a catalogue build.
Actually, the '77 is an easier restore than later bikes in some ways if one is going for a catalogue build as they didn't use the Mongoose stamped components that are becoming so expensive these days. These costly parts were being used from 1978 onwards so I get out of it cheap.
Just the plain Ashtabula OPC, fork & gooseneck stem.  There were so many bars in the catalogue that finding one of them is not so hard at all. The Motomags were found & bought at a swap meet by a friend & the correct square hole, but unstamped seat post clamp was an eBay find for a few Aussie dollars.
New stickers & grips are more readily available that just about anything I know, so it will not be such a big deal now that I have about 80% of it.

I'll post progress reports as they happen but don't hold your breath as this Cooked Goose is going to be a slow build.

[griff]

slow cooked is always best

[MartyC]

That's awesome work and glad to hear a few of the really hard to bet bits survived or have already been sourced 

[CDBMX]

Had a job to pick up a couple of new Go-Karts for a friends little tacker. He is the State champ on his Cadet class but is growing & moving up a class so he gets two new rides to play with. They were in Melbourne, just a paltry 500 miles down the road so it was to be an out & back trip. Left Tuesday evening, back by midnight Wednesday, then slept all day.

The upside is that on the way back, in one of the Northern suburbs were two specialist firms with good reputation in BMX frame repair, so the cooked Goose was left with one of them to repair & to re-nickle plate. Once I get it back I can start the build.
Oh yeah, I left them with two frames of my own, including the '78 Quicksilver that was also in the fire with this one & is the subject of another thread.
Another step forward.

[CDBMX]

This is the Goose at the repairers. It's the one furthest from the camera. The red frame is my '78 Quickie, the subject of amother thread. [The Phoenix rises]
It's the same picture that I posted in the Quickie thread & the two frames that match in the middle are a matched pair of Quicksilver Team Helium race bikes for the McEvoy brothers who were factory team riders in 1982. The two frames have consecutive frame numbers & we know which brother rode which bike. The one next to the red frame is mine.



It's progress

[factory pilot]

Thanks for sharing and good luck on the journey to bringing her back to life 

[Midschoolfool]

Good luck with this. You may not want to ride it though. Years ago a mate and I deciphered that if you put a bike over a fire the paint all came off really quick. However, we soon stopped doing it when we realised it softened the metal and bent very easily afterwards.

I'm not sure what temps your frame was exposed to nor if the metal it is made from makes any difference but I wouldn't ride it hard.

[oldscool]

Nice goose 

[BMX1973]

Bring it back to life.

Another early goose.

 

[CDBMX]

Last Fridays word was that it had just been taken to the electroplater & it would be about three weeks. This allows him to clear a backlog of production work [the stuff that pays the bills] & then some propper attention could be applied to a one-off job.

The fire took only minutes to destroy it, but we can resurect it in only about 16 months. [give or take a month or so]

[CDBMX]

Huzzah, progress at last. The cooked Goose has gone from this, [before the bike shop fire]



to this [after the fire]



to this [todays picture, & it's Nickle plated, not chromed.]



The wheels have been built, but are still wraped in bubble wrap. Pictures tomorrow.

[Coupes]

What a save!! It looks so cool in nickel again CD 👍 Look forward to seeing more pictures.

[CDBMX]

Finally paid the bill this morning when they, at long last, rang me with a final price.
To repair, show plate the Goose in Nickle, supply & affix stickers & freight, same again for one of my Quicksilver Team Heliums, but with chrome, & repair & freight on my '78 Quicksilver. [it was powdered & paid for separately] It came to $2064Au or  1211GBP [I don't have a British pound symbol on my keyboard]

By the time these three are finished the bill will run to over $5,000Au [2,933 GBP] Still, cheaper than Buying that 1946 Luscom 8A airplane that I wanted & taking up flying. Crashing & repairing BMX is cheaper too.
Proper close up pictures when I get them home next week.

[CDBMX]

Well, I have moved out of my former abode & transfered all my stuff to the new, but smaller house. Two bedrooms have been allocated to bike storage & building. This is the latest picture of the cooked goose with some of its mates. The mongoose will be displayed at the opening of the new bike shop, so it has become necessary to put it together with a few new components that will be replaced with the right components once they are restored.
This house move has set progress & finances back big time, but we still move forward, just a little slower for a while.

To the left is my red "Quicksilver BMX '82" model from the first month of production.
The Chrome survivor without bars behind the Mongoose is my Quicksilver Team, frame No.2
The blue frame is my 1978 Quicksilver that was in the same bike shop fire as the Mongoose.
The red bike with gold bars is a 1980 Quickie built entirely from NOS components, including the frame.