I'll be a naysayer here. I've run both older freewheels (almost exclusively suntour winners, new winners, and suntour indexing freewheels), somewhat more modern freewheels (I've used a lot of sachs maillards 7s) and newer freewheels (shimano mainly). I've run them all with newer chains and I don't find there is a heck of a lot of difference. The suntour winners and new winners shift fine and last a long time in my experience. Plus the new 7s have limited gearing choices other than the uber expensive ones from IRD and those have very mixed reviews. I'm not a fan of the older maillard and atom freewheels, though.
Last edited by bikemig; 03-30-20 at 09:56 PM.