Redline 500a

Back in the early 80s, my second bmx and first decent bike was a white Redline. I When I say bike, it was a third or fourth-hand frameset onto which I swapped over from my first bike, an equally well-used and abused Cycle Pro. I have no recollection now of the Redline model but I loved that frameset, and it definitely helped to take my riding to the next level. I stripped the factory paintwork and did a poor, rattle-can spray job on it, replacing the og decals with the red/orange/yellow ones which had by then come out for the series 3 bikes. I finally ended up selling the frameset after cracks started to appear in the fork dropouts! Suffice to say that I’ve since had a soft spot for Redlines, particularly those wearing the series 3 decals that I painstakingly applied to mine.

With that background in mind, I’ve wanted a Redline for a few years now and after several near-misses, ended up pulling the trigger on a 1984 500a frameset. I had originally been looking for a Japanese-made frame but several things swung this one in my direction. Not only the good condition of the chromework and those nostalgic decals, but also the quality of the welding. I’d always looked down on Taiwanese-made bikes as being of poorer quality than their US and Japanese counterparts but the welding on this Giant-made one looks excellent. However, the icing on the cake was the og shop decal on the seat tube. Whilst these are always nice to see, I noticed that this one came from none other than Stu Thomsen’s Family Bicycle Center in Riverside, California. So although this one may not be a Stu Thomsen Redline, at least I can say that it came from his shop!

With the frameset shipped over to Japan, I started to collect parts for it but then decided to go racing again, so the build and my other old school stuff went on the backburner during 2017. However, over the winter break I decided to get this finished by borrowing parts from other bikes and using a few parts that I had been saving for future builds. I also went for a bit of a blue and yellow theme, inspired by a couple of other bikes I’d seen but with a few personal touches of my own. I hope you like the result.