My restored 1983 Haro Freestyler

[Phil B]

Thanks to my lovely wife and the terrific work of Tom at Alan’s, the (2nd!) love of my life is back and ripping up the streets again, over 30 years since she last had an outing. Love having her back

[In2bmx]

Like the look of that   

 

[griff]

Welcome to  Phil

Nice bike and great first post 

[deeman]

Welcome to RAD mate, the bike looks great...many on here would kill to have their ACTUAL childhood bike...most, including myself have to settle for a close replica 
P.S some snakebellies would look much better than those comp III's on there....

[Phil B]

Guys - I am so lucky that it just got stuck in a corner of my mum's garage under strict instructions not to touch it - and my mum, god bless her, left it there untouched for 30 years. It was a bit sad until 6 weeks ago - now it looks like new.

deeman - agree on the snake bellies but my original build had Comp 3s (actually, cheap copies that I still have!) and I wanted it back to how I had it (the comp 3s were better racing tyres IMHO and I raced it at 3 Sisters in Wigan bitd). Of course, I didn't have graphites back then but, now that I can afford it, they are my one big indulgence, having lusted over them all those years ago.

Am loving this site - so many fantastic builds and fantastic memories.

[deeman]

Guys - I am so lucky that it just got stuck in a corner of my mum's garage under strict instructions not to touch it - and my mum, god bless her, left it there untouched for 30 years. It was a bit sad until 6 weeks ago - now it looks like new.

deeman - agree on the snake bellies but my original build had Comp 3s (actually, cheap copies that I still have!) and I wanted it back to how I had it (the comp 3s were better racing tyres IMHO and I raced it at 3 Sisters in Wigan bitd). Of course, I didn't have graphites back then but, now that I can afford it, they are my one big indulgence, having lusted over them all those years ago.

Am loving this site - so many fantastic builds and fantastic memories.

I totally understand man, there are certain things which you just have to have the same! tyres was a big one for me too! I also made a few choice upgrades I would never have been able to afford bitd!

[Spen69]

That is a great story and what a bike to have today, let alone bitd

Welcome to the site and enjoy riding your childhood bike again - you are indeed very lucky to have it still

[Taipan]

Superb bike fella  plus a great story to go with it  I'm interested to know have you a pic before the restoration? how bad was it? and what exactly did Allan's do for you/the build? as I can't see many re-pop parts on it for Allan's lol 

[Mattdub]

Awesome, great to have your OG bike back in your life 

[Phil B]

Thanks for the interest guys. If you look on Alan’s Facebook page there’s a whole story about the restoration together with some before and after pictures. Let’s just say me and Pastel Dukux had a bit of a thing in the 80s!

[kalex]

I'm not on FB though 

Would have liked to have seen that as well

[CustardLips]

Great that you've still got your original bitd bike. 
Out of interest... what has Alans charged you for the restoration and new parts fitted.

[Phil B]

No idea on the cost. My wife did it as a birthday gift.

[Phil B]

Here’s a before photo for those interested. As I couldn’t afford graphites bitd, I sprayed my yellow tuffs black and sprayed the hubs gold! They then somehow ended up being painted pastel pink. My next mission is to clean up the Tuffs and get them back to their 80s splendour! Then I just need to buy an Eddie Fiona GT to stick them on;)

[Phil B]

And for those without Facebook - here's the write up from Tom Garcia at Alan's......

The story behind the restoration of this Haro is rather interesting. With the bike being sent to us by our customers in secret as a special present for her husbands 50th birthday. He's had the bike since new and it had been left in the garage in a very sorry state for many years. She had dug it out, sent us some images to see what we could do.
 Upon receiving the bike we quickly built it up to see what the damage was. As you can see there is alot of paint all over. The bars were coated in a green house paint style coating, along with the spider, chainring, brake caliper, seat/seatpost and lets not even mention the coating on the mag wheels. After a few tests we found that the chrome underneath the paint on the bars was in perfect condition, along with the spider and chainring. We had been looking at a new company to outsource paint stripping to and this was the perfect opportunity to try them out. They said they could remove the paint whilst leaving the chrome intact, and that’s exactly what they did! I recieved back the Vector bars a little dull but completely free of any paint. The spider came back perfectly cleaned and the chainring came back paint free. A little magic on the buffing wheels and they came up a treat, very pleased with the sprocket in the end.
 Moving onto the frame and forks, I'd arranged with the customer to restore this as a clean surivivor build, as we did not want to erase the history of the bike, they had owned it since new. So this ment not replacing any stickers and cleaning up what was there. Firstly, we had to get that damn seatpost out of the frame, this is where John Lee at theseatpostman.com came in. Quick and efficient service ment that was done in no time. The forks had a fair bit of surface rust on them, and after some thinking and a test patch I found that working through the buffing wheels with a pretty serious cutting compound on the first run took off the imperfections and working through my buffing wheels got me a nice mirror shine, without the need for wacky methods involving tinfoil and coke (As some thought on Instagram :/ ) The frame had a few rough spots similar to the forks, so a quick blast on the buffing wheel in those areas and some Solvol Autosol and the frame was looking very nice.
 When it came to reassembling the bike, new headset and BB was fitted and greased, the bike was being ridden on its first outing by a Guiness World Record holding flatlander as a display to the customers husband (very cool!) so we needed it running perfect. This also ment that despite it coming with a rear brake covered in paint, we thought it best to put on a fresh new Dia-Compe MX1000 in gold and fresh DIa-Compe cabling into the original gold Shimano lever. Whilst reassembling I noticed the cranks were a bit worn, where the foot of the rider had worn away near the Takagi logo it had some surface rust, again quick work for the buffing wheel, it was looking mint in no time. At this point in assembly I noticed the original spider was actually a Mongoose item, cool, and with some new Mirage gold chainring bolts it was all back together and spinning nicely.
 We had hoped to be able to fix up the original mag wheels, however time was an issue here. With the paint being very thick and on for a long time, and our method of removing paint from the bars and other parts not suitable for plastics, we were stuck to the traditional paintstripper method, and this was slow. VERY SLOW. We did not have time in the end to complete this so some black Skyway Tuff II's sealed were fitted along with new Comp III tyres. The customer got their mags returned to them for the husband to have his own little project to finish of the build completely. ANd finally that seat was definitely not being saved. And with a yellow Kashimax instock it just had to go on.
 All in all, a fair bit of work but the result is amazing, another bike saved! And as you can tell from the pictures its a transformation. Very happy with the turn out of this and bring on the next challenge!
 - Tom G

[griff]

nice read

Buffing wheel B2B Autosol is giving me the fear though

Someone send Alan's some citric acid and a jar of Peek!

[BMX1973]

Great story 

Bike looks great 

[ollysth]

Thats a great story & good to see an freestyler done a different way 

[Brownie]

Fabulous story. Many congrats