Fox Racing Maico

Never posted up the whole build so will drop it here.

I got the opportunity to provide a few bikes to Bob Fox for his museum he was putting together at the suspension plant in Scotts Valley a while back. They had already purchased a 73 Maico 400 that was going to be used as a base for building a replica of the bike he used to own. This is the bike that helped him decide that all aftermarket shocks of the time period basically sucked and that he needed to build his own. Basically, where it all began for Fox suspension. Anyway, the bike they picked up off Craigslist was a perfect candidate but had to have been one of the ugliest Maico's around done up with gold rims, low bars and two tone seat. Everything aluminum was highly polished.



Onward with the good stuff. Bob provided me some photos of the evolution of their original bike, suspension geometry they came up with, original Fox Air prototypes and frame mods to go by. Cool bit of history.





Lots of little details and a few extremely difficult parts to track down. Single pressure Fox Air's are scarce with only 200 sets ever made, even more so when trying to find some with no chain rash. Had to machine the bodies to shorten them, remove a fin and rethread. Tydog here on Vital handled the machining. Lowers had to be shimmed 3/8 inch to get them to 13 1/2 inches. They made a damn loop around the US trying to get the anodizing matched up.



Had to deal with a difficult situation on getting a correct Wheelsmith style fuel tank made. Over six months(and paid in full in advance), the builder sends me photos of a new piece of sheetmetal being cut and shaped. At the last moment he ships me out a tired old used and dented stock tank with a added piece of metal welded to extend the bottom. Polished up and dirty like a turd but no time left to fight with him, I spent the better part of a day cleaning, detailing and scotchbriting the thing to make it look presentable.




I did all the cutting and fabbing for the forward mount rear suspension and after tacking it in place had my nephew weld it up nice. He's a f'n heathen but he can lay down some pretty welds. Original Fox pics helped.








I had Andy Cline of ACE Racing in Houston build a Wheelsmith pipe, found Wheelsmith pegs on Ebay and had them rechromed, built up the seat foam and had recovered locally, Pete Fox and his assistant Buddy made me up some rare Fox decals, TCR Wheels disassembled the wheels, blasted the powder coat off the hubs, powder coated the rear flat black, stripped the anodizing, brushed and re anodized the wheels natural color and reassembled. I made up the brake stay /tensioner and went to town with the drill bit hogging out everything by hand and not necessarily in perfect alignment just as the original. The bare metal flat bar to keep the chain from rubbing the shock shaft got a blast of flat clear just to keep the rust away. I even had a old school grip donut and snap on lever covers in "I should probably throw this shit away" pile. Fun project.