I've not had any trouble with the shifting on my three ultra spaced Suntour freewheels.
All of mine have a low cog of 32 teeth, and a high of 13 teeth, so a very wide range. I have two six speed setups, one with a Sachs-Huret Eco Duopar and down tube friction shifters, and the other with a Campy Rally (2nd Gen) and Suntour barend shifters. My final ultra is a seven speed, I shift it with 7 speed Shimano Sora STI brake lever shifters.
If I miss a cog with the downtube or barend shifters on the six speed setups, it is user error, or I hit a frost heave or crack in the road while shifting!
The seven speed index shifting is basically flawless.
Jon,
You are on the right path about changing the spacing on Winner and New Winner bodies. The spacers are the key. The bodies can even handle seven speed set ups with the correct end cog.
In my experience, however, some cogs like to be removed from some Winner bodies, and others do not. I'm not certain why this is the case except to
guess that Suntour used some sort of thread lock, and in some cases the application was very generous compared to others. I really don't know.
Unfortunately Perfect and ProComp cogs
cannot be installed on a Winner body. However, Perfect and ProComp bodies can be set up with Ultra sized spacers.
Thus a more affordable ultra spaced freewheel can be constructed, with the cogs we need to match the hills and climbs of Northern New England.
I can help with this if you'd like.
Did you have much frost this morning? We had a few patches.
IIRC, this is an ultra spaced Perfect.
