Originally Posted by msl109

Hello folks - trying to decide whether to keep a Pinarello Montello frame I recently acquired. 55cm, no rust or dings, pretty sweet overall, but there are some issues. It was described as a chrome frame and it is fully chromed, but it appears that aside from the fork and stays, the rest was originally painted and since has been stripped to the Chrome. The chrome on the main tubes shows scratching from what was probably a scotch guard pad and one can see that the finish is rougher in general where filler and paint were probably originally used. There is red paint in the bottom bracket shell. White (or primer) on the shifter braze ons, not sure if there's a third color. No decals except one blue Columbus sticker on the fork, which is why I think it's early - SL, not slx. Anyway, I paid 575 for the frame, thinking it was more of a rarity, and well, it's not. The seller takes returns and with no other option, if he refunds my shiping expenses, I'll send it back. Still, I'm entertaining the idea of repainting it and keeping it if he makes me a good offer. I'm posting pics with two questions - whaddya think it's worth and more importantly any idea exactly what the model is? I'm not even close to a Pinarello expert - only reason I'm 96% sure it's a Montello is the chrome stays and fork and the combination of SL tubing with the top tube brake cable routing, which I don't think was available on the early Trevoisos. Any info or opinions would be a great help. Mike

Originally Posted by T-Mar

+1, the scratches aren't due to the paint removal. The scratches are under the plating. The subject tubes weren't polished because they were going to receive paint over the chrome. Polishing the entire frame would be very costly and is detrimental to paint adhesion. We all know that Pinarello decals will fall off if you look at them the wrong way - who wants paint of a similar nature?

There's no reason to believe that the frame is not SLX. The blue border SL sticker was used on the forks of the early SLX frames. This is because SLX was not a full set. The forks were standard SL and the SLX treatment was only used on the down tube, seat tube and chain stays. Some customers felt that they were getting ripped-off and Columbus changed the fork decals to a red border, to match the SLX decal.

This particular frame is circa 1985-1987. To ease your mind, check the ends of the tubes inside the bottom bracket shell. SLX will have five helical ridges (see pic). Sometimes, they can be hard to see, as they are only 3.5mm wide by 0.35 mm thick, Use a good light or feel for them.