Fråga: Hi Jim, Sorry I do not speak Swedish, my wife is and my father in law gave me a Monark M75 that his dad bought in 1950. After looking at it for two years, last week I finally decided to get it out the barn and had a look at it. I then cleaned it and realising there was compression and the carb did not look too bad. I tried to start it and it fired up!!! (after more than 30 years of non being used)
The thing is now I want to restore it but as they are only Swedish made and sold, I really struggle to find parts and understand blogs: This is the list of things I need, could you point time to the right direction? Could I use some other motorbike parts like BSA or DKW? (I live in London, the bike is near Göteborg)
– Rear wheel (it is badly dented)
– Both tyres and chambers
– Back and front light
– Left handle bar grip
Charles
Svar: Try an ad in our magazine Classic Motor. That’s free of charge for individuals and you will reach thousands people with an interest in old vehicles. I don’t think that you can use many spare parts from English motorcycles. For example, they usually have 40 spokes per wheel in most of them, and the Monark only 36 (very common in Swedish bikes). The tyres would be 3.00×19″ and should be relatively easy to find. If you only need the lightbulbs they have this data: 6 volts 25/25 watt, with a socket called Ba20D (front). The rear lightbulb is a 6 volts 2,4 watts, with a socket called Ba9S.
I can give you some facts about your motorcycle. It’s made in a town called Varberg here in Sweden. After the WW2 there where an engine shortage in Europe. A Swedish manufacture had to buy engines from those who happened to have any at the moment. I the city Eskilstuna there was a small company named John Benson fabriksaktiebolag (shortening JB) who started making small engines in 1949 to fill the gap. The first to build was a 128 cc two stroke engine, the same as in your motorcycle. It had two gears and an output power of 4,5 hp. Early engines (circa first 500 or so) had a French made ignition, later changed to the Swedish Stensholm.
Jim Lundberg