Originally Posted by
T-Mar
Your serial number indicates that the frame was manufactured in December 1980 by Araya of Japan. That's late enough in the calendar that it's almost certainly a 1981 model. The catalogue page is actually dated January 1981. So that should be the actual catalogue page for your Espada and indicates that it was originally a 6 speed freewheel.
However, that doesn't mean that things will work better if you switch to a Maeda/SunTour 6 speed freewheel. Those Powershifters will get you close to having the jockey pulley aligned with the cog, but it won't be perfect or as good as indexed shifting.
Thanks T-Mar! I don't know why I thought the catalog was for '79 when it does clearly say '81, but cool that it does actually match my bike! (The seller's original ad identified my Espada as a '79, so maybe I mixed it all up at the time.)
Yeeeeah, I know it's not the same as indexed shifting, but I'm hoping it might work a tiny bit better...or I have to work on my shifting game with this bike. I'm also just kind of interested in ARAYA/Vista and SunTour in a bike-history kind of way and think it would be cool to match it back up.
BUT...I also have a set of Soma Sparrow bars that can accommodate bar end shifters, and the guy I bought them from was convinced that eventually I'd want to try them on this bike... so,
TBD if I will stick with the stem shifters anyway?!
