*waves* from a newbie

[Avro]

Firstly I love the site. The forum is very welcoming, friendly and accessible.

I got back into BMX very recently following a prolonged illness which left me with a lot of time on my hands. One day I happened to revisit this photograph from, I think, 1982, I am far left:
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Well, you can imagine what happened next!

I thought I would try to buy the bike I had bitd, a humble basic blue Burner which ended up over time with Tufs and tange forks. I started looking at Burners and it just wasn't happening. However many pairs of rose-tinted specs I put on I could not get enthusiastic about the humble Burner anymore. I had become corrupted by the exotica plastered all over sites like this! Down in sleepy North Devon we only had Halfords to get our kit so bitd my only exposure to fancy BMX was through magazines and the telly.

Roll on a few weeks and I found a compromise: a Raleigh Aero Pro. Purchased as a frame, fork, headset, h/bars, seat post and clamp the build was on. Here it is today, I have most parts to make it standard, except the wheels.
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Had I got rid of the itch to build BMX, had I hell!
Next up was a 1983 GT Pro f&f which became this:
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I love this bike so much I buy it outfits:
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...and so it goes on...1983 Diamond Back Viper on the go:
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It has been great fun if a little expensive at time particularly when I get carried away like the next build which is waiting in the wings. My only regret is buying repop brakes for the Raleigh and GT as I am now restoring originals for both bikes. I have found that I rather like the chase to find the right parts and have now learnt that patience is the key to get the bike just so.

Anyway, great site and 

[factory pilot]

  to  mate.. Love that BITD picture 

[Retrodan72]

Welcome to  Avro mate.

I like the original Phase 1 blue Burner, not a lot of people had those as the red one was the one all the catalogues and brochures had. The Aero Pro looks tidy too.

[CustardLips]

  to Rad Avro. 

A Pro Star frameset plus other bits just sold on fb the other week unfortunately... great price too. Be patient and keep looking mate... they do come up. 

[Chez-6]

  to  loving the bikes    and blast from the past 80s pic you guys look  Chez

[BMX1973]

  to 

Great you are enjoying the site and your bikes 

[Andyboy77]

Yeah! What a great start!  Nice bikes and great work!  So to 

[griff]

Welcome to   

[dancetothedrummersbeat]

A massive  to  . That pic from back in the day is excellent. Sometimes we just get over wanting something from back then. I feel the same way about the same burner you had, plus the original red one and the night burner. Although I never had a burner as a kid, those were three bikes that I loved at the time, but don't want them now. I have recently bought an extra burner though, as that was by far my favourite burner of them all. Once again, welcome to RAD and you have some great builds going on there. This bmx game really gets addictive 

[supertuff kid]

That is a great BITD photo you have there of you and you're old mates. I wish I had one, I searched high and low through all our old photos from back then but there wasn't a single one of myself or any of my mates on our bikes... ain't that just typical!

Gotta say I'm slightly different to yourself as I still love the old burners, it goes against the grain a little on this site I know but there's something generally about the bikes we had as kids and that whole BMX scene that just hooks you back to a magical time. Yeah the old burners they had god awful geometry, were sh_t to ride and were pretty low end heavy beasts, but what the heck, as a seven year old on xmas day of 1984 walking into the living room and seeing that shiny new 'ALL GOLD!!!!' 'super tuff burner' sat there just waiting for me, WOW! there really was no better feeling. I never knew what a top end or 'good' BMX was back then... I was only seven and probably wouldn't have cared, as a seven year old wide eyed kid I absolutely loved that little gold bike, my memories of that following summer of '85 it felt like that bike was with me everywhere I went, me and my mates we were always on them, we only really knocked about on the local streets around our estate building makeshift ramps in the roads and generally ragging and racing one another, but to us our humble low end BMXs', those burners, aggressors, viceroys, they were our escape, our freedom, we felt like kings on them and we loved them!!!!   

That little gold burner was eventually stolen from our garden shed a year or so later, man I remember being gutted at the time   When I first started getting back into the whole BMX thing several years ago now I went through quite a few builds, all burners, but deffo the nicest bike I had was a MK1 cromo burner, the Tange looptail framed one, kind of like the kuwahara nova, that was a cracking bike and a really nice BMX to ride. Like your aero pro, ride a bike like that and you can really see the difference compared to the basic burners! Anyway, great photo and bikes mate, it really got me reminiscing. These are two of the burners I have kept which I restored, my best mate had a MK1 red burner so I had to do one and of course the one I had BITD the super tuff.

[Avro]

Thank you for all the super replies.
I know that if I found a basic blue burner, unrestored, I would probably melt! Back then if we could have slept with our bikes we would have, even the humble Burner. This is all sounding a bit rude......Move along now.