Freewheel cog spacing--shimano & suntour
 

For belated mothers day, I'm trying to install suntour command (6-speed, index only) shifters on my mothers Columbus Schwinn touring bike, in place of the crappy downtubes. For some reason however, I had thought that it was a 6-speed, but it is a 5.

Question 1: Is there a difference in spacing between 5 and 6 speed suntour maeda freewheels? Does the 6 just come out farther?

Question 2: Is there a spacing difference between currently available 6-speed freewheels and old suntour maeda ones? There is a shop in philly (where she lives) that is guaranteed to have NOS suntour freewheels, but if new ones have the same spacing, I'd be inclined to go with something with moderns pins and ramps.

Thanks!

1) While I have old 5, 6, and Ultra-6 freewheels sitting on my parts shelf, I've never measured the spacing. My gut feel is that the 5 and 6 are close enough to allow indexing to work. Is the rear derailer index compatible?

2) By ramps, I assume you mean a Shimano or Shimano-compatible freewheel. The Shimano 6-speed spacing is slightly different than Suntour. But it's close enough so that indexing can probably be made to work. The only 6-speed Shimano freewheel I have is 13-21 so when it's time to hit the hills, I put on a 6-speed Suntour alpha that I can build up as 13-24 or 13-28. Since Shimano shifting/Suntour freewheel works, I imagine the reverse would, too.

IIRC, the Command shifters have a friction mode. That's your easiest solution.

em

Thanks for the replies so far. I'll try it with the current freewheel, and if that doesn't work I'll try out different ones from the freewheel bin at my local bike co-op.

Do I really need an indexing derailler? If so, would it need to be a suntour one?

Unfortunately, these dont have a friction mode. Most did, but aparently not all.

I'm not sure if Suntour changed rear derailer cable pull when they went to indexing. I think they did.

I've tried mixing Suntour shifters and a Shimano rear derailer without succes but I've read about others who have gotten it to work.