Classic & Vintage - Suntour compatibility question

I've got an old Viscount Aerospace (complete with the Fork of Death) that I'm thinking about refurbing, including replacing the FOD with an old chrome Viscount fork.

The bike currently has a Shimano Titleist RD and no FD. Digging around in my component box, I came up with a Suntour V-Tluxe RD and a Suntour Spirt (that's how it's spelled) FD. Are these two ders compatible with each other? If so, are they a good choice for that bike?

Front and rear derailleurs don't care what brand the other derailleur is. You can run Campy with Simplex. Shimano with Sun Tour and so on. I think the Shimano Titlist is a FD that evolved into Dura Ace. Roger

Agree with above post. The Spirt and VGTLuxe combo was used a lot on Japanese bikes of the 70's. You can mix and match to your heart's content !

A couple of my bikes have Sun Tour Compe V FD and Shimano 105 RD 'cause I like the 'backwards' shifting on the front and index 7-speed in the rear.
Top

I concur, you can mix and match. While the Titlist front derailleur may appear similar to Dura-Ace front derailleur with a cursory glance, they are very different and only share a few nuts and bolts. All four are good derailleurs, but most consider the SunTour rear to be slightly better than the Shimano, by virtue of its slant parallelogram. However, on the front most would probably give the nod to the Dura-Ace by virtue of the fact that it is lighter and does not shift "backwards", as noted by Top506. However, most people adapt very quickly to the reverse front shift, provided they are not constantly switching bicycles with both normal and "backwards" shifting front derialleurs.

It is interesting that a lot of knowledgeable cyclists seek out SunTour's "backwards " shifting front derailleurs. These derailleurs use the spring tension to shift from the small to large chainrings. It is argued that it is logical to use the spring tension to make the more difficult upshift. However, most of this same group sees little or no value in Shimano's Rapid Rise rear derailleurs which use the same concept.

...However, most of this same group sees little or no value in Shimano's Rapid Rise rear derailleurs which use the same concept.

As long as Suntour was in business, I saw little or no value in Shimano's ANYTHING. Bad experiences turned to prejudice, I guess... I've gotten over that now. But I still get a bad taste in my mouth whenever I say "shimano."

Would it be fair to say that the Suntour Spirt is a better choice than the Shimano Thunderbird GT?

Yes. Roger