If your were going to put together a vintage touring group what would you use? By vintage I mean friction shifting and threaded freewheels. That should include many now deceased parts other than your typical Campy and Shimano. Personally, I've got a nice set of Campy Record hubs laced to some Mavic CXP30 rims and an old TA/Mafac/Suntour group from about 1982.

I've ridden SunTour Cyclone Mark II. Nice looking and light weight. The shifting for 3x7 was very good.

There was a recent thread about vintage touring derailleurs. The Deore XT "stag's head" has fans. I had a nice set, but sold them without having tried them in a build. Looking back, that was a shame.

Suntour Cyclone GT II works great on my recently acquired Super Sport.
Also, consistantly smooth shifting on Huret Rival on my PGN10.

Both were OEM on the respective bikes.

I'm kind of building this right now with my Voyageur.

My wheels are 36h Avocet hubs on Wolber Super Champion rims and a Suntour (something like) 14-34 Freewheel. Crank is a Takagi Tourney XT 48-38-28. Pedals are Union beartrap clones- need some Cristophe toe clips. Bars and stem are 3TTT- if those are too new, I'd like to get an SR stem and SR "Randnner" bars. The brake levers are the slotted Superbe (with Mirrycle Mirror) and if I had the brakes I wanted, they'd be the Shimano MC-70. I really like the Sachs/Huret ratcheting downtube shifters they feel so nice and smooth- and they're not very common. Since we're talking friction era... I can't use what's on the Voyageur now... so I'll go with a Suntour VGT Luxe rear (because I've never used one, but they seem to be well loved) and a Suntour AG Tech in the front. Saddle- I really like the San Marco touring, but it doesn't have bag loops on it (for some reason), so I might go for the Avocet Touring II.

If I could find a source for a new version of these Specialized Expedition tires... I've got 1 1/4 in the front and 1 3/8 in the back. They're fantastic. But they're 30 years old...

What era? '80s? '60s?

If vintage means anything from the 80's or earlier, I'd go with a VGT Luxe RD, a 14-32 or 14-34 freewheel, either 5 or 6, and a compact double, like 48-34. That's about what I'd put on a road bike anyway, except pairing a 14-28 freewheel to those chainrings.

Of course it also depends on the terrain. Are you crossing New England or Illinois?

My '75 Fuji was originally a 10-speed (2x5) with the ubiquitous SunTour 14-28 out back and Sugino Maxy 51/39 crainrings. Over the years it has turned into an 18-spd (3x6). The crankset now is a Sakae SX 48/38/28 and it now wears a 13-26 6-spd Suntour Winner Ultra freewheel (just took off the 13-21 Ultra). Derailleurs are currently SunTour Compe-V front and a long cage MD(?) MTB rear (bought when my VGT-Luxe ate a pulley several years ago)... Never had a problem shifting at all. No really steep hills around here so the 28/26 is kinda overkill, but I want to try some loaded touring in the OH/PA/WV region.

You may want to swap that 13-26 for a 14-28 or bigger! WV has got to be the biggest state in the Union when you flatten it out! OH and PA aren't far behind.

If I was traveling other areas - say through WV - yes I'd gear myself a bit differently.

My plan is to ride the perimeter of the state of Ohio - so the only hilly sections would be along the OH/PA line from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, and from the Ohio River valley in Cincy up to the Dayton area. Everthing else is flat-flat-flat! Flat along the Lake Erie shoreline, flat following the Ohio River from East Liverpool all the way to Cincy, and flat from Dayton on north along the OH/IN border.

Another of my 'bucket rides' is the GAP and C&O from Pittsburgh to D.C., but that is also following railbeds for the most part - flat again!

"A man has got to know his limitations!"

I'm thinking 80's. I've used Suntour and Shimano Deerhead on some of my vintage MTBs and they work great. As far as brakes, hubs and the rest of the group that's up in the air. If it came off of an 80's MTB then I probably have it in my parts box.

I'd go Huret derailleurs, Mafac brakes, TA triple, Maillard hubs, Berthet pedals, Ideale 92, ... Not per se a group, but all classic!

How about a Shimano Arabesque Group with a long cage RD ?

I dunno, but it would probably have half step + granny gearing. I got to really liking that on my Alyeska touring in fairly flat Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Specialized Expedition by djk762, on Flickr

Just replaced the original Mountech on this Expedition with V-GT Lux controlled by Riv Silvers on the bar ends. Very nice.

-D

It may be a bit late, but I thought I would add that the Shimano Deore DX group ('89-92, I think) is probably one of the best values out there. 95% of Deore XT, and most people won't even give it s 2nd-look. I have it on My daily commuter, a touring bike, my wife's touring bike, and the kid-hauling tandem and the stuff just works great.

I'm building up a vintage touring bike. I'm using campy tipo hubs laced onto mavic ma-2 rims and cyclone long reach brakes. I haven't decided on the derailleurs yet but I may end up going with deore xt. The crank will either be a suntour triple or a deore xt. I took a few pics of the bike (a custom Melton touring bike) before tearing it down for this build:

If you search this forum you will find that I attach 600 again and again and again. I hate the stamped parallelogram plates and the blatant flop of an attempt to appeal to the cache of nuovo record. It's also a straight parallogram so for touring the performance is not competitive with suntour.

I agree with the sentiment that shimano SIS 7/8 speed are the best touring derailleurs out there, but they are not as vintage. The XT 739 (8 speed) rear derailleur has to be the single best touring derailleur because it is robust, works beautiful, is compatible with new 8speed shimano bar-cons and cheep shimano HG 8 speed chains and cassettes work perfectly with it. It is ubiquitous enough to be okay for a touring bike (m900 I would have a hard time using on a touring bike)... and my favorite you can rob a lightweight upper pivot bolt from a broken down 9 speed XT, XTR, ultegra, dura-ace and later slx derailleurs and replace the heavy solid original one to save a few grams....

The DX group is beautiful... and works brilliantly.

I love the 600 Arabesque group and all of it's respective components except the rear derailleur... the springs are weak and wear prematurely and it is primitive compared to the Suntour derailleurs that it was supposed to have been competing against.

There is no comparison between a V series Suntour and the 600 Arabesque when it comes to design, build quality, and shifting proficiency.

Mind you, no-one else made a friction derailleur as well as Suntour and once they sorted out their indexing issues their groups were every but as good as Shimano but it was already too late as they failed to outsource production and their production costs rendered them non competitive in the OEM market.

I never really liked the 600 brakes either. The levers were barely a step up from the ubiquitous dia-compe of the early 70s and the caliper arms were flimsy especially compared to most of the dia-compe offerings at the time. For a second tier group the brakes were also behind the competitors in my opinion.

That is a terrific looking Expedition,
from a former 83 Expedition owner.

My mileage may vary as a fairly lightweight rider... always found that the 600 brakes stopped me well enough.

The Rolling Stones came to mind when I read the thread title.

Just finished working on my Cascade... pulled the SRAM X5 and opted to reinstall the Cyclone GT as the Vx I have needs a little love before it goes back on anything.

That old Cyclone is still crisp as chips and changes gears like it is indexed.

My tourer is a 1969 Magneet Sprint:



Derailleurs are the old, early 70's Sun Tour combination: V-GT and Compe-V front with the rachet handlebar shifters. Yeah, they're a little heavier than some of the suggestions already made as they're entirely steel. However, that rear is strong enough to pound tent pegs, and on a loaded touring bike weight doesn't mean ****, reliability is everything. The crank is a Stronglight 99 triple, which I really love. About the only thing I'd warn you against is the Weinmann centerpulls. They're ok, but you can do better under load.

You're going to find that there's a rather strong school of thought that nobody has ever made a better touring derailleur than Sun Tour. I have a difficult time disagreeing with that sentiment.