Switch Simplex to Suntour or leave alone?
03-18-14, 04:08 PM
#26
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I was born in the forties, so I assumed that all that Suntour stuff was cheap Japanese knockoff junk. Little did I know.
03-18-14, 04:33 PM
#27
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The arms are all aluminum (unlike the metal-sheathed plastic arms on the 4xx series), but the pulley bolts are steel.
03-18-14, 04:37 PM
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Just kidding Shimano fans!
The Suntour (Maeda) slant parallelogram RD design was a technical milestone that in a big way, helped bring the Japanese bicycle component industry into the modern world, as it leapfrogged over the Euro companies that still had mostly straight parallelogram RDs that could never match the shifting performance of the Suntours back then. It was no surprise that all the Euro companies then copied Suntour's slant parallelogram design, as soon as their patents that protected them, ran out.... and Suntour kinda died with it...
IMO, Suntour didn't even really need a "Superbe" line with what the Cyclones already delivered....
03-18-14, 04:43 PM
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The chromed sheet steel sheathed Delrin arms on the 4400 series and SX derailleurs were never really a problem. The derailleurs might have loosened up a little quicker than the all alloy SLJ versions, because of the plastic at the pivots, but they certainly lasted long enough for most people that bought the thousands of French bikes that had them...as I never really heard of complaints about 4400 series and SX RDs asploding on people.
03-18-14, 04:45 PM
#30
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It's not just the 4xx series that has metal sheathed arms. I have a half dozen SX610s here with metal sheathed plastic arms.
03-18-14, 04:48 PM
#31
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The chromed sheet steel sheathed Delrin arms on the 4400 series and SX derailleurs were never really a problem. The derailleurs might have loosened up a little quicker than the all alloy SLJ versions, because of the plastic at the pivots, but they certainly lasted long enough for most people that bought the thousands of French bikes that had them...as I never really heard of complaints about 4400 series and SX RDs asploding on people.
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