Problems with Crossbow's Monarch Springer Forks

[TornadoDave]

I recieved my new set of Monarch Springer Forks today from Crossbow, and I'm not pleased with them. The quality of the springs, forks and much of the assembly is excellent. Unfortunately, the forks are NOT an easy fit onto "Any Schwinn style Cruiser Bike" as advertised. There are a few serious problems with them.

1. My forks did not come with a headset bottom bearing cone, and the diameter of the stem is such that my local shop's replacement part 1" cones are just a slightly bit too small to fit without pressing them with a hydraulic press or pounding them with a pipe and a hammer. Since I didn't have a pipe the right size, I would have had to run down to Home Depot just to buy one.

2. The paint/power coating and unturned area of the stem runs almost all of the way up to the threads, which means that to properly fit a cone you have to press/pound it all the way down. This increases the risk of damaging the cup and/or the stem.

3. An older Schwinn bearing cone DOES drop right down the stem, but the fit is then a bit loose.

The entire bearing cone thing is a big pain. This part should be included in the package.

4. The TOP bearing cone (which does come with the package) of the headset does not work with old-style Schwinn headset bearings and cups. The cone part is too small in diameter to properly engage the bearings. If you try to tighten the cone down to take out the side-play, it rubs on the top of the bearing cup. To use the included Top parts of the headset, you have to replace the cups and the bearings. Again, this is a bit of a pain.

5. A Schwinn Top bearing cone WILL screw onto the stem's threads and properly engage the headset bearing..... BUT due to the thickness of the cone, the NEXT problem is increased .....

6. The stem is about 1/4" too short to fit a Schwinn Cantilever frame. I tried it on both a 1953 model and a 1980. It is simply too short. Using the standard Schwinn headset bottom bearing cone, original bearings and cups, there are no threads sticking out of the top of the spring bracket! I guess I COULD cut 1/4" off of the head-tube to make it work, but there's no way I'm going to do that.

The long and short of it are that the forks do NOT fit a Schwinn Cruiser Bike as advertised, unless one is willing to make extensive modifications.


After my intitial enthusiasm for these new springer forks, this is a BIG disappointment. The forks show great promise in their design and manufacture..... and would look GREAT on my new ride. Unfortunately, I'm having to send them back since they won't work on Schwinns.

 

[62Higgins]

That really sucks.

As far as length goes, I feared the same thing. When I first heard about them I specifically asked about the steer tube length. I can think of alot of bikes they won't fit on.

Too short is too short, I do not know how you'll remedy that w/o cutting and welding in the needed length for that aprticular bike.

As far as the bearing race goes, they are typically matched to whatever headset you're using. See if your local shop has a JIS (which I think stands for Japanese Industry Standard) race. They are slightly larger and will probably fit the steer tube better without needing all that blunt force trauma. Nashbar had some of these not too long ago, I don't know if they were threaded or threadless though.

 

[Multipass]

Thanks for posting this info TornadoDave - you've saved me from a potentially costly mistake.

I was all set to buy one of these forks, then I saw your write up. A quick trip down to the basement to measure some parts shows the steer tube on a set of Schwinn middleweight forks to be 6 3/4" from the top to the bottom where the lower race mounts. The repro Monarks measure 6 1/2".

As you have found out, that 1/4" difference is a bit of a problem.

This is good info to know for those who want to run these forks on a Schwinn.

-Mp

 

[TornadoDave]

I solved the bearing problem....

I solved the bearing problem by turnining a race on my lathe..... unfortunately, most folks don't have a lathe so they can't do the same.

This does not solve the length problem though.

 

[Clothespin n]

I'm not so lucky to own a SCHWINN..yet.

would you say the design,quality,Paint...etc is decent?

They have to be better than those Tiawaneese Bee Hive Springers you see
on most New Bikes...and it seems that when it comes to Old Style Springers you can get those cheapo bee hives...or these.

not much out there for selection now a days!

Besides the Schwinn issues,would you say,being I've never held a set in my hand,that they are built pretty good ?

cause..I wants a set real bad!
cause I'ze love the way theyz looks!

thanks,
peace,

Kev.

 

[yeshoney]

Experience with Monark springers

I have had at least 5 sets of Vintage Monark springers in both Boys and girls lengths. When I made my Mini Twinn Chopper bike I had to use a girls length main fork and a boys truss rod. To compensate for the differing lengths I left out the small round spacer blocks from the truss rod/Spring assembly. I went to put it in the Schwinn head tube and it had so much slack I thought I was gonna puke. I mocked the whole thing up prior, but never tight enough to ride it. I checked one of my complete forks to find out that they came with a very small cone spacer that is actually split. I am not sure of the reason for this, but being split you can slip it over the fork tube and it will fit down over even if it encounters bumps or out of roundness. This appears to be the number one problem with retrofitting these forks. I had to add about an inch of thread to the girls fork tube and make a 3/8" spacer in order to lock everything down. Hope this helps.

 

[seca40]

Thanks for the info. I've been drooling over these forks for about a month now but haven't purchased them for lack of info on this very topic.

 

[Cooper Cruisers]

Same issues here, I bought mine of ebay and was disappointed when I pulled it out of the box. I should have returned it right then. They do not fit on Schwinn Frames! The cast black legs are full of pits, the chrome seems nice though. The dropouts are not drilled for newer wheel axle size and mine were too narrow to even fit a standard hub width in...not sure if it's bent or what? I'm keeping mine and am going to modify it to work the way I want to...same your money if you're thinking about buying them...

 

[socal_jack]

Had similar issues with my repop Monark detailed in the following thread


http://www.ratrodbikes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=542&highlight=monark

 

[Korporal]

The dropouts are not drilled for newer wheel axle size and mine were too narrow to even fit a standard hub width in...not sure if it's bent or what?

Same problem on my chopper. I fixed it by moving the dropouts from the inside to the outside. Then I took a file to them to widen them up a bit to take a 3/8"? (modern) axle. I'm sure a dremel could make this a bit easier. It wasn't too hard to do, just a pain when the part was advertised as a direct replacement for any one inch threaded fork.

 

[T Hall]

Yep same here. The monarch repop springer was too narrow at the dropouts to accept the S7 rim for the front. I'm going to have to swap the rockers to the outside of the forks to get the S7 rim to fit. A whole inch too narrow. And the bearing race problem, I took a piece of sandpaper around a wooden dowel and sanded the inside of an old schwinn race until it fit on the head tube. There are 2 different head tube lengths for this springer set. The 6 5/8" length fit perfect on my 55 schwinn straight bar frame. Hope this helps. Tim Hall.

 

[TornadoDave]

Tim....
Since I posted this item, the folks at Crossbow have improved their design. Most importantly, they added a longer head tube. The originals were simply too short to fit older Schwinns.

I had numerous telephone conversations with them about this, and the other problems.... and they responded somewhat.

They are still too narrow.... but this can be remedied by the "Arm-strong" method, and/or swapping the droput arms to the outside, or both. (I just stood on the end one fork, and pulled upward on the other.... and bent it to the desired width)

In their defense, I will say that they appear to have made an honest effort to provide us with an alternative to the run-of-the-mill Chrome Springers.

Soooooo are they perfect? No. Can they be built into a cool bike? Most certainly....IF you are willling to put some work into them.

 

[T Hall]

Thanks Tornado Dave,
I wasn't sure if I should try to spread these forks the old fashoned way, like you did, or not. I have a beautiful painted S7 rim that I want to fit on these monarch springers, I'll try swapping the rocker plates to the outside of the forks and see how much more room I get. How wide is the hub that you are installing on your monarch springer? My S7 is 3 3/4" wide and the dropout on the monarch springer is 2 3/4"......... Thanks, Tim Hall.

 

[TornadoDave]

I used mine with an older "Schwinn Approved" hub laced to a painted S-7..... and I had to spread it a good 1.25" or so. One thing to note is to take it apart first. I tried to bend mine when it was assembled, and wound up bending the drop-out arms. Then I had to take it apart to bend the parts back right.

By the way.... I love the old painted rims. You can do anything you want with them... and they have a cool look to them.

 

[karfer67]

we sell these forks in the shop and yea there have been some issues. mostly as stated before with the lower fork race not fitting right. also yes you can swap the hardware around on the lower part to make it wider however the bolts will not clear all hubs. over all i think it is a good fork trouble is in this day and age it is really hard to make one that fits all. i do know they make two different steer lengths 6 and 7 inches.

 

[oldy57]

I have 2 of these forks. 1 is on my Massey Boardtracker in Buildoff2. I am happy with it on that bike and the fork was almost perfect looking, no flaws. It is not a Schwinn though. I have a second fork for future use. I would buy another if the right bike came along.

 

[Muttley]

So which frames will this fork setup bolt up to without having to modify everything? I love the look of this fork but I'll pass on it if it's just going to be a huge PITA.

 

[socal_jack]

Unless crossbow has changed the dropouts, they are setup for the old 5/16" diameter axles whereas most modern hubs are 3/8" it required filing the openings on the dropouts to accept the 3/8" axle. The next hurdle is the dropouts are at the old time width which required moving the plates to the outside of the fork legs on newer hubs(100mm OLD), however this could cause the mounting bolts to ping the spokes unless you found some short height locking nuts and/or a washer combo that worked. The next thing was the steerer tube length, crossbow used to only offer 6 5/8 which limited you head tube to ~5 1/4", and you have to count millimeters even at that length, anything over 5 1/8" steerer tube just go with the newer 7 1/8" length that should fit most cruisers(headsets burn about 1 1/2" so leaves some wiggle room). Finally, at least on mine there were some fit and finish issues(fork leg alignment, paint, hardware quality), the most glaring of which was there was no shoulder to mount the crown race on. I shimmed it with some foil but basically it was free floating in the fork crown chrome-ish piece that was floating on the actual fork crown below it.

From a functional point of view, there's not enough pre-load available for an adult, springs were bottomed out. Could be a lighter person might have better luck.

Ended up selling it on the classified here, but it looked great.

 

[Rat Rod]

Dang....that sounds like a lot of tweaking for a brand new part.

Seems goofy to not set them up to accept newer axle sizes too.

Were they thinking that people restoring Monarchs would be the only customers?

 

[october]

i guess i've always wondered about the bottoming out issue, as there doesnt really seem like there's much room between the coils, for any amount of compression....