A while back I bought a cheap lot of bikes because it had a blue Murray Monterey cruiser. It has Carlisle 'Lightning Dart' whitewalls, Mesinger saddle, a Shimano coaster brake, single wall chrome steel rims, Wald front hub, stem and BB. I don't have access to it right now, as it's on loan to a friend. I surmised it's from '81 ot '82, from the license expiration date and also from the date code on the Wald front hub. The frame looks identical to SSenorPedro's project with pointy dropouts and all. The fork is a older style similar to that on Conejo747's bike. I think cruisers generally soon adopted a more BMX style unicrown type fork in the 80s.

I seem to recall that beach cruisers enjoyed a resurgence after the first generation BMXers/proto mountain bikers came on the scene. Conejo747's Monterey may have been well before this trend, when the name was used for a line on 26x1-3/8" tire'd roadsters, inspired more by Raleigh roadsters than cantilever frames.

These were not particularly great bikes, though with potential. Mine was fairly decent, but had a couple problems. The original handlebars were tweaked. The Wald stem was "bottomed out", making it impossible to cinch down the bars sufficiently. The rubber blocks on the pedals were gone. The bike seemed to have been assembled with a symbolic amount of grease in the BB and headset, though fortunately the bearings were still good. The spokes were so loosely tensioned, the wheels had a lateral wobble of about 1/4" even though the bearings were properly adjusted.

I replaced the pedals, bars and stem. Tightened the spokes and trued the wheels. Removed about twenty goatheads from the tires and patched up the tubes. A bit of elbow grease to get rid of some rust, and it's looking sweet. My friend is riding it all around town.