I can remember lusting after the 1985 'The Monarch' which was Tange Prestige and TIG welded, That came out a year after I bought my first Overburys, I have never seen one since and also not seen a frameset come up for sale. However, I thought about building this one up as an homage to that - I have the necessary NITTO bullmoose and some nicer shifters etc. Like a lot of bikes of that era, it was XT/Takagi and fitted with Deerhead but having had a lot of deerhead components they are not very durable and so I will probably stick with suntour and dia compe. I do like large flange hubs and araya rims so those I will keep, but I did think about trying to replace the axles with either hollow ones with a skewer and or something less brittle than solid old axles which frequently snapped on me ( ballbearings in the road). I thought about a metallic or pearlescent finish with black decals - to get as close as possible to what the Monarch used to look like. thoughts???Following with interest. I did one a bit worse than this and it came up lovely even without painting. What’s the plan?
Think that’s a great idea would really like to see that. The standard white courier has been done over and over, I love them but they are all the same.I can remember lusting after the 1985 'The Monarch' which was Tange Prestige and TIG welded, That came out a year after I bought my first Overburys, I have never seen one since and also not seen a frameset come up for sale. However, I thought about building this one up as an homage to that - I have the necessary NITTO bullmoose and some nicer shifters etc. Like a lot of bikes of that era, it was XT/Takagi and fitted with Deerhead but having had a lot of deerhead components they are not very durable and so I will probably stick with suntour and dia compe. I do like large flange hubs and araya rims so those I will keep, but I did think about trying to replace the axles with either hollow ones with a skewer and or something less brittle than solid old axles which frequently snapped on me ( ballbearings in the road). I thought about a metallic or pearlescent finish with black decals - to get as close as possible to what the Monarch used to look like. thoughts???