Kontact 

If indexing is important, than you use Suntour levers with Suntour derailleurs to shift a Suntour spaced freewheel. They work great together.

Ghrumpy

Exactly. I've been doing that for almost 30 years.

Kontact 

So why make it sound like Suntour is oddly narrow? All the various companies have used their own cog spacing that is different from Shimano many times over. Sach, Mavic, Campy and SRAM have all departed Shimano spacing standards at various times.

79pmooney

Thanks. Explains why my SunTour Command shifters never worked perfectly with Sachs FWs. Shifting in the middle cogs was excellent but got worse toward the extremes. I could tailor the cable tension to improve either extreme but then shifting got slow in one direction on the middle cogs. I put up with that for years as I liked everything else about the system (and was tired of trying to find still good SunTour FWs).

I have a bike setup 7-speed 126. Shimano 28t FW. SUnTour Power ratchet DT shifters. Shifts too well. (I'd love to get a FW with no ramped cogs.)

Ben

Ghrumpy

Not sure what point you're trying to make. Since Suntour invented and named "ultra" 6s spacing, and basically used it for their 7s, I guess I am just used to referring to Suntour's narrow spacing as "ultra".

Not sure I like the phrase "departed from Shimano spacing standards" either as if they were in charge of things. They're just a corporate juggernaut.

But thanks for making my point. Suntour's not "oddly" narrow, just doing their own thing. And their spacing was narrower than Shimanos. BITD of 7 speeds, those were pretty much the only games in town. (Campagnolo and everyone else was struggling, and hardly a factor until 8s.) I got asked many times in those years to try to make Shimano this work with Suntour that or vice versa. The narrowness of the Suntour cog/shifter spacing is just enough to make it not index with Shimano very well, at least not well enough that I was able to satisfy my own mechanical standards.

Ghrumpy

The best I could ever do was to tune the shifting for the middle of the cogset, which split the differences on either extreme. Kinda worked, but never very well.

79pmooney

I get a bit of a kick that the SunTour spacing is somehow considered "odd" or different. Or that "ultra" applies to all the narrow spacings. In 1977, we were selling Fujis with SunTour Ultra 6. 6 cogs that fit into 120 spacing. I believe Ultra 7 came out the next year as those frames were 126. (I was no longer working in the shop but Fuji sent me a replacement frame that came 126.) I always assumed SunTour copyrighted the "Ultra" name. Shimano and the others were still a ways from having anything other than the normally spaced 120 5-speed and 126 6-speed. SunTour set a standard that worked really well. That others choose to go a different standard is not SunTour being somehow "different".

Ben

Kontact 

You do realize that we are having this conversation because you felt that Thermonicscott's and my posts needed correcting?

Which is strange since the reference for spacing on Sheldon Brown says that regular Ultra 7 is spaced exactly the same as Shimano IG of the era, and that Suntour was even spaced. 5.0/5.0, 32.4/32.4.

And I have been using Campy Synchro II with Athena for 29 years, and the Campy charts all show that Regina, Dura Ace and Winner freewheels all use the same blue insert because they are all spaced the same. (And it shifts like butter with all of the DA, Sante, Sachs and Sun Race freewheels I've used. Athena was a great derailleur.)

So I'm not sure why you think Suntour freewheels are spaced differently, aside from the fact that their spacers vary because the cogs vary to achieve even 5.0 spacing, or because of Microdrive, which was spaced unevenly. But everything seems to indicated that Suntour Ultra 7 is the same overall width and same even spacing as you find in most of the freewheels of that era.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/cribsheet-spacing.html

Ghrumpy

Hm. Everything except a Suntour freewheel gap gauge that shows two different "ultra" spacings, for different cog positions. And my box of cogs that are all the same thickness. And a Sutherland's that describes two different spacer widths. And almost 30 years of experience riding and working on the system.
So it's not that I "think" they are spaced differently. They are spaced differently. The ultra gap gauge for the two outboard spacers is about 2.9mm. The other ultra gap gauge is about 2.55mm. (Regular size is about 3.15mm)

I'll go even deeper. Suntour's 7s freewheels are spaced differently from each other, depending on whether they are index-compatible or not. New Winner (the original ultra-7) had consistent cog spacing all the way across, while Accushift 7s did not. Hence the gap gauge.

Salamandrine 

Maybe I can clarify this a little. I lived and worked in shops during this era. It's a bit fuzzy now to be honest, but I think I remember it well enough.

Suntour Ultra freewheels predate index shifting and 7 speed becoming mainstream things. IIRC Ultra became available in the late 70s, around the same time that some racing bikes were going to 6 speed/126. They had a slightly narrower spacing that allowed you to convert a regular-for-the-time 5 speed/120mm spacing bike to 6 speeds. A little later they came out with Ultra 7 freewheels, meant to convert standard spaced 6 speed/126mm bikes to 7 speed.

Standard 5 ---> Ultra 6
Standard 6 ---> Ultra 7

To do this, you also had to use a special narrow chain made by Suntour. The usual Regina Oro or whatever were too fat. Sedisport chains were also narrow enough to work with Ultra freewheels, and many people preferred to use them.

By the late 80s 7 speed and indexing had become the new thing, and the old Suntour Ultra spacing was adopted by everyone. No one called it ultra spacing anymore, but basically, it still was.

That said I don't doubt there were some subtle differences, as Ghrumpy notes. It wasn't just going from 5.5 to 5.0mm spacing, though that was the gist of it.

Kontact 

Then it should be simple to take a Suntour 7 and a Shimano 7, flip one upside down so all the cogs are nice and close, then take a picture that shows the Suntour is obviously off of the Shimano 5.0 spacing. I don't think Sheldon Brown never made a mistake, but the guy worked on a lot of bikes and never had trouble getting Shimano shifting to work on a Winner freewheel or vice versa, and lots of other people have reported the same thing.

If someone says they couldn't get a Command shifter to work on a Shimano freewheel in the era when it is claimed Suntour was making index specific freewheels, I would suspect the problem was not the freewheel spacing.

Salamandrine 

Sheldon's archives are thorough and wonderful but he was not infallible. I also recall some subtle difference between the old Ultra 7 freewheels and Accushift that came later

Was Sheldon Brown ever a professional mechanic? It was my understanding he was the webmaster at Harris bike shop, not a mechanic per se. I'm not asking this to be a jerk, I just don't know.

Ghrumpy

You get right on that. I don't need to prove it to myself. Please post results. Thx.

Kontact 

I don't have any Suntour freewheels anymore, and I've posted all the reference material to Suntour freewheel spacing I could find. It rather seems you are the ones making the contrary claims and insisting other people are wrong, not me.

If you'd like to post a link to a reference that is different than 5.0 spacing, I would be interested to read it.


And this isn't some big ego thing. Maybe Winner freewheels and Suntour shifters do have uneven spacing. I just would like to see some evidence of this claim when there is evidence of the opposite.

Ghrumpy

As I've said before, I am reluctant to post photos of copyrighted material publicly. So I'll see about sending you references via PM.

This isn't an ego thing for me either. But it's weird to have someone who hasn't claimed any actual experience insist that references on the internet are more authoritative than reality. No offense intended, I assure you.

Reality: here are my Suntour feeler gauges. For a start. Not sure I can get good photos of a measurement of them though. I'll see if I can find a Shimano 7s. I know I have a Sachs or three.

Kontact 

The feeler gauges are only meaningful if the cogs are all the same thickness. Because we aren't talking about the spacers but the overall index spacing.


And I have been working in bike shops since 1990. I've owned many Suntour indexed bikes in both 6 and 7 speed, and have indexed early Syncro, Shimano, Suntour and even combinations of Shimano, Suntour with a Heliocomatic or 5.0 spaced Sachs shifters, Mavic derailleur with a Shimano 4.8 spaced cassette. I was paying attention to freewheel spacing and pull ratios since the '80s because of Syncro and these other early experiments.

Dean51 

I found this tread to be interesting.....for a while. Now it has taken on elements of another thread concerning to grease, or not to grease, square taper spindles. I'm moving on.

Dean

trail_monkey

You know Dean I am ashamed to admit that both threads were started by me. I am getting tired of asking a simple question on these forums and having them turn into big ass wars that go on for pages. I had taken a very long leave of absence from these forums and now I remember why. There is plenty of other forums on the internet that I belong to that don't have this much *****ing and belly aching over who is the biggest bike expert. I think I am done as well. Sorry my questions end up getting a few people panties in a wad. They weren't intended to start wars. I am embarrassed.

qcpmsame 

@trail_monkey, its not your fault in any way, form, or fashion.

Bill

clubman 

Don't sweat it t_m. There's usually a very good signal-to-noise ratio on this forum so take what you want from it and never feel guilty about a thread gone astray.

jimmuller 

About halfway through this thread I started to wonder. On one bike I have Suntour Vx derailleurs, Shimano DT friction levers, and a 6-spd FW probably Shimano. It hasn't burst into flames yet but it keeps thinking about it.

The explanation by @Salamandrine above is how I remember it.

The great thing about standards is you can have so many of them.

ramzilla

I've never seen a Suntour 7 speed freewheel. Didn't even know they made them. I thought Suntour went out of business because their patents ran out & all their 6 speed stuff was obsolete. But, I have converted a few 6 speeds to 7 speeds. 6 speed Uniglide freehub set ups to 7 speed Hyperglide set ups. Brifters are nice on the old 80's bikes.......... Haven't tried to cram a 7 speed HG freewheel on an old 6 speed Suntour bike yet. Seems like all the old Suntour 6 stuff is still working fine.

Kontact 

Suntour was around long enough to invent Microdrive compact MTB gearing and have 8 speed cassettes. GXP was a popular 7 speed road group for a couple of years.

trail_monkey

Isn’t the current Sunrace line of products just a division of the old SunTour?

Kontact 

I guess. But that isn't a Winner freewheel and none of those products are made in Japan. I would guess "Suntour" is just a name that was purchased, like "Schwinn".