New/repro "Monarch" double springer fork

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bombshelterbikes

bombshelterbikes

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Help me out. I want to get one of these springers, but between Uncle Stretch saying he had the toughest of times and a guy on ebay saying he had to have his remachined to fit modern wheels.....my questions is.....are these worth the money? if so, what do I need to expect before I can mount a modern wheel and ride? any input would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
modern wheels are a tad wider and have a bigger diameter axle so you do have to tweak them abit
but I have had the original and aftermarket forks beside each other and to use modern wheels you have to do it on the old ones too
I made it work :) i just filed abit of the axle threads til it fit
 
my guess is the remachined is hog the slots for the forks to accept the newer axles theyre about 1/16"-1/8" bigger
ive never used them but ive read really good things about them and some not so positive.oldy57,karfer67,andboardtrack fan all have dealt with them maybe they can give you a better answer
 
I have one of the Monark repops on my Columbia. It was a nightmare to try and fit a 26 inch wheel with a modern 110mm hub. What I ended up doing was putting a 24 inch wheel on. It only has an 100mm hub, and that cleared (barely). You could probably re-lace a 26 inch wheel to a 24 inch hub for a few bucks. I've been thinking about doing that, to rake out my bike a little bit without cutting and welding anything. But yeah, anything over a 100mm hub and you're going to have to do a little metal work to make everything fit. Hope that helps.
 
I couldn't get any of the wheels I had to fit between the drop out brackets...even when I swapped them to the outside of the fork.

The spokes kept acting like they would hit the brackets either way I tried to do it.

I gave up and traded Uncle Stretch for a Brooks saddle...he's better at engineering stuff than me.
 
Measure the length of your headtube before you purchase a set. You can order the forks with a longer steer tube if it's longer than 6 inches. I put a set on a girls bike with a 7 inch headtube. The length was right but the included spring tower was too short. I had to cut it apart and add a 1.5 inch piece of steel to make everything stay inline( look at the pink bike in the spring rat ride pics) Now look at the first pic below. See how the whole springer sits wrong? Expect to do some kind of engineering no matter what bike you put it on.

PICT3851.jpg


bikes.jpg
 
I took the one I got from Steve and stuck it next to the original I got from Hooch and the old one was wider. Steve was right no matter how you stick the bottom part on it either dosent work or the nuts hit the spokes. With the little bars on the inside of the forks you can spread them apart enough to get a wheel to fit. It takes alot of muscle and several dirty words to get it on there. I did have to cut a spacer to make up the differance on the neck. You could cut the neck off if you knew for sure you were going to leave it on a bike forever. I changed the washers to ones that work. the ones they come with are too thick and the sholder bolts really dont work right. they are suppose to be close when the sholder bolt is tight but not have too much space where the forks are sloppy. they are so narrow i dont think you could run a front fender and you would have to tap the hole in the bottom of the neck. :roll:
 
My .02 about these. Don't buy the repo stuff. The one thing that is not addressed here is the lower bearing race and the necessary shim (maybe in the How To link?). ANyway, I have had many of the original forks and I have found them in all different head tube lengths, I have used girls forks on boys bikes, boys forks on Schwinn head tubes, and even had a set widened and chromed. The older ones are much more condusive to manipulation for your custom applications. Check ebay if no one has one for sale or put a post up about looking for one. Things to look out for on an original are the correct shouldered bolts on the rocker plates and the lower bearing race shim. The nice thing about these forks is that if they are tweaked, they are very easy to straighten out. Oh yeah head tube lengths i have seen range from 6 1/2" to 8". The longer ones can have threads added very easily to adapt a Girls fork to a boys bike.

Joe
 
Really and truely they arnt real bad if you have some tools and a little know how. If you think you will buy one and stick it on with a couple wrenches and a rock its probably not going to happen. Like yeshoney said there are a bunch of original front forks out there that look really good and perform well , but also beware that just because it looks complete it may not be and you might have a hard time finding parts for a 60 or 70 year springer :roll: :lol: .
 
and alot of the old springers need to be modified in one way or another to fit different frames or different wheels

I kinda use the Tim Gunn mantra off the tv show "Project Runway" "Make it Work"


yea i think I am big enuff and tattooed enuff to admit I watch a show about clothing designers hahahahaha
 
I ended up using a original fork (the repro was to short for my head tube) combined with all the repro hardware and and the piece that the springs mount on. I have found that alot of the originals tend to bow outward just below the springs. I tried taking the bow out of a pair of mine and ended up loosening the braze job on them. Here are a few pictures of mine and some rough dimensions. The wheel set is from a 60's Evans with 26x2.125 tires. The hub measured 3 1/2" wide locknut to locknut. The fork was 4 1/4" from the centerline of dropout to centerline of dropout. The piece that the springs mount on was 3 5/8" CL to CL where the rockers mount.
Picture054-1.jpg

Picture050-1.jpg

Picture052-1.jpg

Picture051-2.jpg
 
Uncle Stretch said:
Ok Hooch just dont tell us you watch it to get in touch with your feminine side. :lol: :lol: :lol:
Click to expand...


lol I tend to like really creative things music, custom bikes, custom cars, clothes, tattoos, art, architecture you name it
there isnt much vanilla ice cream in my life :)
 
Hey Hooch ~ But i bet there is a lot of ICE CREAM! :? :lol:
 
i dont like this fork much other than it looks good. but other than that between the fit and i still have not ridden one where the fork worked all that well, i just dont like it. i even had one fail i installed on a customer's bike right at the crown frankly we are lucky as a shop the guy was cool and realized it was the fork and not something we did or that could have been ugly. i like that they repoped a cool old fork but it should have been changed to work with more things and setups. i really dont like the way the lower fork crown race sits and have spent hrs trying to find one to fit it and have resorted to brazing a few on because the steer is too small. i would not do it if i did not know what i was really doing or knew of a LBS that did not feel confident in installing it.
 
Read my post above. It requires the obigatory shim that Monarch made for it. They are extremely hard to find if the fork does not have it already. Otherwise Fuhgetaboutit.


karfer67 said:
i dont like this fork much other than it looks good. but other than that between the fit and i still have not ridden one where the fork worked all that well, i just dont like it. i even had one fail i installed on a customer's bike right at the crown frankly we are lucky as a shop the guy was cool and realized it was the fork and not something we did or that could have been ugly. i like that they repoped a cool old fork but it should have been changed to work with more things and setups. i really dont like the way the lower fork crown race sits and have spent hrs trying to find one to fit it and have resorted to brazing a few on because the steer is too small. i would not do it if i did not know what i was really doing or knew of a LBS that did not feel confident in installing it.
Click to expand...
 

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