Hi, I have a vintage Nishiki with Suntour barcon shifters, a 5 speed cluster (14-28) and a suntour vx derailleur. Will my shifters and derailleur work with a 14-32 5 speed freewheel or better yet with a 7 speed 14-34? Nothing is indexed, so I know that will not be a problem. I am assuming I will have to buy a longer chain. I am trying to get a lower gear ration for the hills around here. Thanks for any insight you can give.

I can't tell offhand. Your shifter won't have any problems, but your derailer might not be able to handle the extra chain length. And you should go for a new chain. Chain and sprockets wear together, and may well get upset if you replace only the one. On top of that it's rather important to have enough chain to survive the big-big combo, as pretty bad failures can happen otherwise.

A 7-speed freewheel is wider than a 5-speed. At least it will require respacing the wheel. It'll probably be a tight fit in the frame as well.

Have you considered swapping out the crankset instead? I was looking at an Altus double just the other day, which would have suited your purpose.

Suntour Barcons will work on a seven speed fw.

You don't say what type of crank you have. If you have a crank with removable chain rings you might be able to change to a 46-34 teeth combination if your crank takes rings with 110 mm bolt diameter.

Your bike might allow modifications with no additional parts- but it might not. Vintage* Nishikis came with all sorts of parts- can you post pictures of the bike?

*I was working on bikes when Nishiki bikes were new and fresh. Does that make me vintage?

Hey Jeff, I think we are both vintage. For some reason the upload feature is not working. I'll try to get this figured out and send a few pictures.

Thats a seriously nice vintage bike!!

Sweet Jiminy Christmas! That's a *very* nice old Nishiki! Are those black Dura-Ace high-flange hubs? Oh, geez, and it's orange, too...



I think you can push the rear freewheel to a 14-30, but that's about it. If you had a long-cage Suntour V GT Luxe, you could go to a 14-34, but that's about it without a crankset change. The smallest chainring that will fit on that set is 42 teeth.

You could put a triple crank on it and get really low gears without changing anything else, but most of the currently available cranksets would stand out like the Dalai Lama at an Elvis convention. Velo Orange offers a nicely-styled triple crank that should work on that bike:


Please post this picture over on the Classic & Vintage forum. It's definitely both.