Roberts D.O.G.S.B.O.L.X

Hi you lot! I am new to the site but go back to the early 90's when I remember sooooo many people lined up on the start line.
I ended up selling my soul to the devil back then and for the trade was invited to Croydon to measure up and later pic up a lovely Bolx. Never forget it as my exhaust fell off of the car on the M3. Vauxhall Chevette Hatch back metallic Brown. It was my Grandmothers.
Any how I still have the bike though I trashed the forks in the first two weeks riding straight into a hidden log. Broken headset, written off forks, lost pride but the rest was OK and it meant I could get some suspension forks. Manitou. Black and Purple elastomer model. They were rubbish for the money and I got my money back and bought some Pace rigid. The ones with the chrome legs, RC30's I think. Yad yada yada I could go onn but won't unless you got all night............ So three paint jobs later its time to restore the mutts nuts to former glory. I called Roberts from New Zealand and they gave the impression of not being too interested. Shame. Old decals no longer available, stem would cost a bit to make (don't know where my original is) They would try and match the original paint job, one of the very few white and red models, my choice!
So I am looking to you guys for help in keeping the bike alive. I can never ever see me getting rid of it and I will ride it to the grave if it lets me. You kinda get attached with a custom built relationship between August 92 and May 07. So can anyone help? Do you have a dogsbolx, do you know what script was used for that period? Its changed now. Do you know where I can get hold of the little colombus bird in the red background. Do you have any decals you could scan? Please please if you can do help. Here is a now pic for you lot.
Great site, many thanks I aim to hang around a while if thats cool.
Clint

If you have any sanity left you'll forget this site and take up bowling instead before the madness sets in and you spend all day on ebay looking for that certain part that you must have, or is that just me?

Anyway welcome.

Gil M on here can help, or try these guys http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage ... decals.htm or http://www.cyclart.com/

HTH

John

Yeah you are not wrong. I was bitten by the BMX bug a while go and know what your talking about!
Thanks for the tip re the contacts I will definately try them. Argos looked like they do a pretty good paint job, then again JohnB who is also looking at restoring gave me some good info. So that would be good news if we could work together on it.
A very good mate I used to race with is going to get his painted as well so that we be another B.O.L.X getting restored. Great news. His was White and Black like many others. Looks great! His is currently silver. So I will try Roberst again re the decals that are apparantly availabe and go from there. If anybody is interested in the build or any other info just drop me a line.
I stripped the bike down last night and when there are no other components on it you realy do notice the dings don't you!
All the best and thanks again for your help. Any more hints and tips appreciated.
Clint

Hi i'm restoring an Overbury's Pioneer and was after the Columbus OR decals , i contacted Columbus and they sent the frame decals to me at no charge.
Pm me and i'll send you the details.
Good luck with the build.

Clint, if you're in NZ you might also want to try Jeffson/kiwibikes in rotorua, Jeff might be able to fillet you a nice replacement stem together.

My goodness where did that time go? May 2007. Well an update is long over due. So visited the UK from NZ about a month ago and with my old team mate we shot up to visit Mr Roberts ourselves. Phone call had been made prior with one of his loyal colleagues, name escapes me. We arrived at the crack of Dawn, always a nice site. Had our bacon buttie at the cafe down Gloucester Road and then spent the next hour+ talking with Chas, discussing our ideals and realising that our ideals are not always possible. Very interesting chat.

As both frames were in great condition (Paul also decided to get his painted) he still has the forks, lucky begger. It was possible or rather worth the investment of working on them and painting them.

As for replacement forks for me well that was a near impossibility, the reason is the demand for the tubing. As you are aware most tubes were of different material Max, MaxOR, 753 the list goes on. Well Chas had no material around that would match teh demands of teh fork. At the end of the day I suppose you don't want a liability. He was of the impression that the same went for the stem material. I cannot believe I misplaced mine!!!!! How sad is that. Its on one of my mates bikes somewhere and when I find it look out.

So the Pace RC30's it will be and in all honesty I rode those more than anything else. They do no longer have the decals that were originally stuck on the frames and nowadays they etch the lettering into the frame at the paint shop. So I am busy scanning and sending original decal fonts from the old pictures I have just gone through.

All in all it was a great experience to spend the time discussing the bikes. Of course we discussed much more but that would take all night. The bikes should be worked on any day now and then off to the paint shop.

Will keep you posted probably about another year or so!!!!!
Cheers

Ohh yeah if you have a 1" Roberts stem, I want it. :shock: :shock: :shock:

Good story, I'm looking forward too seeing some tasty pictures...

Welcome
You'll find out :twisted:

ross bee in lower hutt will do you a cracking paint job on the roberts - he can even paint on old decals designs

I've heard worse stories than that about Chas Roberts, so maybe you caught him on a good day. Even so, if you'd have had the good fortune to be in Wooster, Ohio rather than Croydon, you could have dropped in on Rody Walter. I'm sure he wouldn't have given you any bullshit about there being no steel tubing available any longer for forks and stems, he'd have just showed you examples of his work. To be fair to Roberts, the materials are probably much more readily available in the US as there are so few framebuilders left in the UK. But then maybe one of the reasons why framebuilders don't flourish here is that they tend to be so small-minded relative to people like Rody.

Still good luck with the repaint and whatever decals they can shift themselves to give you. It's a great-looking bike and it's fine with those RC30s anyway, but RC31s might be a good upgrade.