The mighty RAC gets a revamp!

[lawson]

I always wanted a set of the Marzocchi RAC forks since they came out in 2001 but alas the were crazy expensive.
Anyway, i bought these off here a week or two ago and set about giving them a new lease of life.
This is how i got them.

There were stripped bolts. gouged carbon and a steerer chopped far to short.
I had my work cut out for me..

I began with tackling the lower clamp area. I replaced three of the threaded nut and bar parts with some nice stainless bolts. The fourth snapped clean off and involved me having to get an engineering company to drill out and retap the final bolt thread. Job done!

Seeing how crap the painted drop outs were i whipped out la'dremel and ended up with a much nicer finish

and finally

Next was the uppers. I sanded back the paint, filled in the dents, primed, flatted back, painted, flatted back, laquered and then banged the sods in the oven.

The oven trick is awesome and really hardens the paint up a treat. It looks and feels excellent.

An issue i did have is the lack of availability of decals for rare, old forks.

My solution - draw them myself. Took bloody ages but im chuffed to beans with the result.
Ill let the pictures do the talking....

my hand drawn decals

and where they are going to reside - on the front of my new pink Scandal!

Hope you guys approve
Mike

 

[orange71]

blinking flip - nice job :shock: (though some might argue about the ultimate destination )

 

[Enid_Puceflange]

Great work on the forks

I have liked these for a while too, saw them up for sale and was tempted, but knew I had nothing to put them on

Glad you have done a restoration on them I woulda been too lazy

Gc

 

[DM]

That's a lot of work!
Projects like this push the retro MTB thing towards the kind of crazy attention to detail shown in the vintage BMX world.

(although I'm also unsure about the ultimate destination )

 

[kaiser]

Nicely done

 

[jonnyboy666]

i have never been able to decide whether i like the RAC fork! being red didn't help as it's a colour i have never liked! but it was more a are they a modern different thinking designed fork or ahead of their time but now look retro designed if that makes sense!!

sort of like the lamborghini countach, it was a futuristic design when it came out but now looks like the pasts version of the future!

does that make sense??!! :roll:

look so much better in black though and while i'm not a specific on one basher i question the destination purely on colour!!! pink??

very impressed with your work though

 

[02gf74]

top work - especially the decals.

did you sort out the steerer?

 

[Scrat]

Thats a lovely refurb

bloody top job on the decals too.

My absolute unicorn fork they are. Don't think any made it over this side of the world though?

 

[lewis1641]

Good work