Point

While looking at one of the old bikes in the house, I started having the itch to do some wrenching and upgrading to the drivetrain. The current RD is a Sun Tour Cyclone 6 speed, circa 1988, and was thinking about adding brifters, since Harris Cyclery has the latest 7 speed Shimano units. Stretching the 6 speed freewheel to 7 speeds shouldn't be a problem with total spacing of the cogs. Has anybody tried something similar and what cable routing or tricks did you use to get things to work?

bikeman715

just change the 6 spds freewheel for a 7 and change to the brifters and you'll be good to go . you might need to redish the rear wheel with the new freewheel .

hueyhoolihan

i've occasionally run into rear derailleurs (RD) that didn't have enough "throw" to cover the width of the cogs on the freewheel/cassette i wanted to use. some RD have a boss on the parallelogram that the low gear adjusting screw rides up against. sometimes this can be filed off, if need be, to create a little more "throw" and permit one to run a wider freewheel/cassette than the original design permitted. hope you don't have this problem. good luck.

rhenning

You will also need to change to a Shimano Index derailleur as the cable pull on Shimano systems and Suntour systems was different. In other words Shimano brifter will not index a Suntour derailleur. The brifter/shifter decides the index. Roger

Kimmo

Any Shimano derailleur from the last 25 years will work except 8s Dura Ace and 10s MTB stuff.

zacster

I use friction shifters on my vintage bikes to keep the compatibility easy. I have old style Campy NR shifters/derailleurs with a modern 10 speed wheel and it works great.