BMC_Kid

Good deal! Now I have a starting point for pricing mine!

Elkfart179

Paint, and especially decals, can pick up trace amounts of acidic chemicals from the air, and fade, or yellow, over time. extremes of heat, cold, & humidity can accelerate the process. New decals can be found online, to replace old ones.

BMC_Kid

If I may add, having touched quite a few Pinarellos from this era, not just the Montello, Pinarello paint quality was not very high. The bikes coming out of Japan at the time were of higher quality. I think the main issue with these Montellos is that it is very difficult to get good adhesion to the base chrome finish. Today it is much easier with paint and primers designed chemically to bond to the chrome but back in the mid-80s to early 90s, this was more art than science and sometimes they got it better than usual and sometimes they didn't. I think my bike is one of the ones they got it better on. I've owned it since the early 2000s and it is now stored in a climate-controlled area but even when I originally purchased it, it showed very little degradation to the paint and decals. I've seen so many where the decals have completely flaked off. That is easily fixed with new decals that fit right in the voids left by the missing decals. But the frames that I have seen where the clear coat a/o paint is flaking off have no other option but a respray. That's the other paint issue, bonding of the clear coat to the base coat. You'll see frames with the base coat still intact but the clear coat has separated and flaked off.

Chombi1 

It wasn't just Pinarellos that had "quick release" paint and decals in the 80's. I still remember the brand new Ciocc and Bottecchia framsets hanging from the celings of our LBS, literally raining paint and decal flakes on my brother and I with the slightest touch. I guess it was kind of a typical Italian bike thing......

BMC_Kid

I never had a chance to see those frame makers growing up. The bike shop that I used back in the day, which is still around by the way, stocked frames from Zullo (very nice paint), Picchio (very nice paint), and Tommasini (excellent paint but painted in the US). He also sold Quattro Assi but those frames were for the most part manufactured in the US and had excellent paint as well (I still have a few). I do have a Tommasini-built QA steel frame that I was going to restore but just haven't got around to it. The paint seems to have been of good quality but it had a hard life, so who knows for sure. Every now and then he'd get in a special order from some other Italian maker but not often enough for me to judge the paint quality.

Chombi1 

I think when Ten Speed Drive became the distributor of a number Italian brands in the US, they did improve on the paint and decal quality on the bikes because the finishing was done in the US..... but the ones coming straight from Italy painted, retained their "quick release" properties....

BMC_Kid

Finished building my Montello up. Posted in another thread but thought it would be good to add a photo here as well.

Random Guy

Looks great!