Raleigh Montage

[raleighmontage]

A couple of years ago I picked up TWO Raleigh Montages, one with a strangely odd-shaped frame but one rather good one and built a "good" bike from the two. I love my bodged Montage dearly, it's a fantastic bike and I fancy restoring it and modifying it retro-stylee.
I think it's from 1991 (a whole year older than me), in a beautiful shade of sky blue with awful graphics and ever so futuristic 21 speed Suntour Accushift gears. Alesa wheels as well- another company I've never come across. And strange hexagonal Ritchey "True grips", which are incredibly comfy yet they deposit black rubbery goo on your hands. Lovely.

I have made some concessions to safety by installing V-brakes as the old cantilevers failed to aid the bike in slowing down, and although this could be very exciting to anybody viewing my cycling, I found it terrifying and quite dangerous.

So.... Any suggestions on what period modifications to make? Or better still.. does anybody remember owning one?!

Cheers!

 

[reanimation]

Hiya, Hmm dunno,

Cant remember what these bikes were like, have ya any pictures or anything?

I had a Raleigh Apex from early 90's that I'm getting back, it seemed to have some reasonable Shimano stuff, cant remember too much about it though. keep an eye out in FS section for old bits you fancy.

RE cantis, I'm going back to cantis on my current retro build. I know some of teh cheap ones were crap, but I'm expecting teh new better ones to perform well while being retro authentic

 

[old school pete]

montage

This was my first mountain bike. As far as I can remember, it had a sakae oval-tech crank, a silver sakae seatpost, tioga copy t-bone stem, and lee-chi brakes! (think cheap exage country brakes!!) My gears kept going, probably due to my lack of spanner skills at the time.

 

[velomaniac]

Bought a Raleigh Massif once which was the cheaper Hi Tensile steel version of the montage. Really liked it but was slightly too small, despite this it kept up with a Yeti full sus modern bike around the woods with little bother.

Go back to canti brakes for a more original look, just use better canti brakes !

Also a brooks B17 leather saddle always looks good on a lugged steel bike in my opinion.

Look after it.

 

[reanimation]

Ah now I get it!

Raleigh Massif I remeber my mate getting one when we were halfrauds rats aged hmm 13 or summat! I was well jealous, quality bike in my eyes at the time, yeah treat it to a mild and subtle pimping and upgrading IMO period style

 

[tintin40]

I remember having one. sold it to buy a Muddy Fox Allu pro Sorry can't remember what type of brakes it came will. OK for the price of bike. Remember the green/blue colour. I liked the bike.