Huh?
For starters, "14 Speed" bikes were the marketoid's dream in the early 80's... after the success of 12 speed bikes in the late 70's. The original mantra of the early 70's bike boom was "10 Speed Racing Bike"... Back in the 50's it was "3 speed English racer"
Spinal Tap 11 on the volume control syndrome....
Getting back on topic, most bikes with 7 speed freewheels were sold as "14 Speeds" rather than 7 speed freewheel bikes. Marketoids pushed the total number of speeds on a bike during the bicycle arms race days of the 80's... i.e. 14 speeds, 15 speeds, 18speed, 21 speeds and so on.
Later when 9 and 10 sprocket freehubs became standard the terms 9 speed, 10 speed and 11 speed became more commonplace for lay people.
I digress again.
In both the 2nd edition and 3rd edition of Frank Berto's
The Dancing Chain book, he lists 1981 as date for Shimano 7 speed freewheels. (pages 274 - 2nd edition and 286 - 3rd edition).
The first mention that I've seen of a 7 speed Shimano freewheel is in this 1987 catalog:
Shimano Bicycle System Components (1987) scan 27
Suntour certainly made 7 speed freewheels in the early 80's. They came on most of the 14 speed performance model bikes!
Maybe I missed the message where this was discussed"
"I have a high regard for Sun Tour but have no patience for companies which stubbornly refuse to accept what the cycling public is demanding. The snide references to "casual" rider who might have preferred index shifting is about as wrong as it gets. Back then, if you were in your mid-20's, strong, and committed, you wanted to be on top of the group, whether it be a shop ride, laps in the Park, or a race. You don't get to the front of the pack by missing shifts. The demand for SIS came from the racers, not the "casual" rider. To suggest otherwise is to be just misinformed."
Shimano introduced DuraAce SIS index shifting in 1985. They had taken away much of Campagnolo's mid range market and were going after the NR/SR business so they were actively pushing the Pro Peloton to adopt their new system.
Holy sacred Campagnolo was the company pushing the notion that index shifting was for "casual riders". They openly stated that it was just another fad... but they brought out their Synchro shifters to try to fill the market demand for indexing.
Between 1987 and 1991 Campy made 3 stabs at trying to get Synchros to index reliably. In 1991 they gave up and adopted some of the features that that made Shimano indexing work.
BTW, Suntour NEVER got it quite right...
verktyg
Chas.