Very nice!

Well you can't just show us the picture, tell us that it's the first one, then just sit back.
Tell us more, I need more, more more.

How did you come to know of it?
How are you sure that it's actually the very first frame to be made?
Where was it located? [general area is OK]
What's its life story as you know it?
Is it a pre-production [prototype] frame?
Was there ever a prototype anyway?
Is it a production frame that was sold to the public, or retained for use by the maker?
Where has it been most of its life, in use, in storage, in a museum?
Is that the original paint in your pictures? [If so then it's had VERY little use]
Do you have the rest of it?
Do you know what the original components were ....... exactly?
What is the serial number, or other markings?
What month in 1977 was it made?
Where was it made? [Location + Factory, back shed, other?]

I hate it when someone dangles something like this in front of me. It's teasing at its worse.

Interesting to note in the picture that
The two furthest from the camera have Motomag wheels which doesn't automatically make them Mongoose bikes. [but probably are]
The two middle riders are about to push off with their left feet on the pedal suggesting they are possibly left handed.
No Quicksilver sticker on the downtube? [Did they have one on the other production frames in 1977.
Do you know who the rider of the Quicksilver is?

Last edited by Kid_Carbine (2008-09-13 10:43pm)

Gentlemen, Lets set the record straight. the QuickSliver pictured was the first built by Steve Meddows, owner of Competition Development in Rydlemere NSW. All later Quickies had the fork gusset facing inward not outward like this one. Why the change, i'm not sure? The bike was bought by my mum Kay for my brother & myself to race. My brother soon got off it and on to a Mongoose and i later jummped onto a JMC as the need for "liteness" & the ability to "jump the gate" became the new game in winning races.
The Quickie was stolen on an adventure down to Eastwood bike shop one saturday morning but was thankfully returned to me after a week of searching the local D's. It had been repainted by the mug who stole it. It was then strippped and re finnished in original colour(candy apple red) & re stickered by Mr.Meddows. The bike then sat in our garage for years.
Until i tripped over this site & saw the post, I thought my brother still had posession of the bike.
I thought it would have been a good starter my son,Max. Thanks for that Mark. I only hope the, now owner understands the history & the herritage the old Quickie & treats it acordingly.
Thanks for the memories, Cheers, Michael.

i guess foot brake only hay .:

I think I should possibly weigh into this discussion because I actually took the photo of the four bikes starting and a friend of mine took the photo of the same bike jumping.

Firstly, the bike in these photos was the first quicksilver prototype frame.  It had been welded up within a couple of days of the race meeting and as someone has correctly pointed out, the seat pole is jammed in the frame because the shrinkage of the welding made the hole smaller and they didn't have time to ream it out (which they did on later models).

As far as I know, only one frame was made with no brake bracket and it is likely that the reconditioned frame in the photos above is that frame, because we don't have any photos of the RHS gusset.  I think it's quite possible that the frame has an inwards flared hole on the RHS and an outwards flared gusset on the LHS.  This could be perfectly possible, if they made two gussets the same, i.e. not made as mirror copies.  Maybe the owner of the frame can confirm if the RHS gusset does in fact have a inwards flared hole.

The rider on the bike is Dave Walden and also as far as I know, he owned it initially.  The components used on the bike were stock items from Competition Development, so that means that are mainly BMX Products Inc sourced, i.e. Mongoose.

The other riders in the starting line photo are:

Jeff Keen
Mark Bradley
Brett Ryan

Jeff is on a Suzuki BMX and actually took the photo of the Quicksilver jumping you see here.  He did various stories for Australasian Dirt Bike at the time about BMX and took photos for those stories.  This photo is actually in a book called BMX Down Under as I remember it (but I can't find my copy right now!)

Mark Bradley is of course the person who welded a large proportion of the quicksilver frames during their production.  He was at the time, also a Sponsored Mongoose Rider, as was Brett Ryan.

Time passes & we learn more.

The professor is right, there was only one prototype to begin with, som the info I had earlier was incorrect.
The gusset plates were thought to be interchangeable left & right so that the gusset hole would have an inward turned hole both sides.
Oops, they were not interchangeable, so one that turned out to be a 'right side only' gusset was welded to the left side resulting in the odd arangement seen here

Production frames were all made with gusset holes turned inwards on both sides & all were made with a brake bridge.
The earliest currently known production frame carries a date code of 18th of May 1978 & the sequentially applied serial is 24. [185824] [DD-M-Y-NN]
This would sugest that the first few production frames were made in early 1978. The production rate appears to have been very low at first as two frames, frames serialed 65 & 66, are date coded the 12th of October 1978.