Originally Posted by
bulldog1935
I still like Shimano FD better than Suntour, and vise-versa on RD.
Suntour under-priced themselves out of the market. The French first offered Suntour on near-top-line touring bikes in 1971-2, and you couldn't sell a bike without Suntour by the end of the 70s. If they had taken advantage of their superior patented design (which Everyone copied after the patent expired), priced and marketed themselves for the prestige instead of the frugal, they would have survived the 80s.
That was part of it for sure, but not all of it. They did have the Superbe line which was as expensive as anything. Much of their decline was IMO because their early click-shifting wasn't that great compared to Shimano's. Once the Suntour patent expired, Shimano was able to combine their latest SIS/positron with the superior slant parallelogram, and it was game over. Also, by the mid 80s frankly the new bike market was like 80% mountain bikes, and Shimano had better marketing, a clearer less confusing product line, and more exciting looking products.
Originally Posted by
bulldog1935
I bought my crank arms over 3 years ago, but it was buying from a Japanese shop using a broker. Merry Sales (Soma) was importing them even then.
2 years ago bought the Microshift R10 from Universal Cycles, and even then Merry was the only source for the XCD RD (outside Japan).
The 3-bolt cloverleaf chainrings are new:
SunXCD Clover Leaf Style Chain rings for 50.4mm BCD cranks - Stronglig ? Velo Duo Cycles
though 3 years ago, the Japanese shop where I bought my XCD crank arms offered a 3-bolt spider.
OK, thanks. And thanks for that link to the clover leaf chainrings. I guess I just didn't notice SOMA/Merry had SunXCD.