Great bike, great score. The components, meh.

Beth Horner was spec'ing those Bianchis, this was not long before she left and Sky Yaeger started. Those Bianchi proto-gravel bikes were way ahead of their time, and Beth took a lot of crap from competitor product folks back then who didn't get it.

But using all that Suntour stuff didn't help. Bianchi and Cannondale were probably the two most "loyal" Suntour spec'ers. Poor shifting performance and consequent poor sales forced their hands, and Shimano took over.

Without getting too far into the weeds, and avoiding broken-record syndrome, I'll say that Suntour's "component compatibility" was mostly marketing spin to gloss over the fact that they really needed three different shifting geometries, which they either didn't recognize, because their "good enough" wasn't good enough, or couldn't afford to implement. I think it was a combination of both, and it failed them. And their "component flexibility" likewise exacerbated their shifting performance problems, and was a combination of sloppy product management ("Eh, WCC should be able to sub a different chain---should still work OK.") and weak market position---Suntour was desperate for spec so it was hard for them to push back against big customers looking to save a few yen with different/cheaper parts spec. Those spec'ing substitution decisions caused real damage. Shimano did play hardball with spec, and it's easy to make that seem villainous, but their stuff always worked well, and that's why Shimano succeeded and Suntour failed.

Interesting that the reality was Shimano's stuff was much less sensitive to subbed parts than Suntour's.

Also interesting that SRAM's winning an anti-trust suit against Shimano, who had tried to bully OE to only buy Shimano components, is what opened the door to SRAM really getting into the marketplace. Shimano did pay a price for playing excessively aggressive hardball.

And circling back to Suntour, a fax from SRAM to Suntour just around that time, saying their analysis showed they'd need three different shifting units to cover Suntour's "fully cross-compatible" product line, is what caused one of the Suntour product guys to look very confused, and say to me: "SRAM understands our products better than we do."

And though the Command Shifters have their fans today, they never sold well. And it wasn't unusual to find them installed incorrectly. And, yeah, the "New" in '92 likely was for new 8spd, since they'd been in the line for a couple years already. I don't know if there were other changes done to the levers, that was after my time, but I don't think Suntour had any money available for new molds, so I'd be surprised if there were any significant hardware changes.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Your noodle solution for the front brake is smart, but noodles always seemed to me to have a lot of inherent friction/drag. No something you'll necessarily feel, the short cable run and strong caliper springs usually neutralize/overcome the friction, but it bothers me nonetheless. I'll usually do the uglier solution of routing the cable/casing over the top of the stem, or if I'm not concerned with period-correctness, use a short chunk of Jagwire link housing, which is a little flexier so it doesn't mind tight curves, and it's a lot smoother than a noodle.