Suntour ?

BITD it was all Shimano, everyone it seemed had to have the big 'S', but I do remember a smattering here and there of Suntour. Remembering the magazines of the time, much was made about the upper end Suntour equipped bikes, but was it any good, compared to Shimano, or was it just that Shimano was better at marketing ?

From what I could see some Suntour bits were almost exactly the same in appearance as Shimano, the XT reat mech for example, it looks very like the XC PRO mech from Suntour, was it essentially the same, just different branding ?

Details on the Suntour I preffered, where Shimano would use moulded plastic, in the case of the rear mech cable tensioning screw, Suntour would use a knurled alluminium screw, the same with their levers.

What about Suntour shifters as opposed to XT shifters, I heard Suntour are more robust, but every bit as good as XT.

Why I ask, is because I am looking more into Suntour now, the XC PRO stuff, why, because it does not seem to command stupid pre owned prices and I like to be different and not follow the herd.

What are people's oppinions of Suntour, underrrated, what ?


Now, Suntour suspension forks, seeing as my ride seems to be accumulating quite a bit of non Shimano bits, I wondered about the shock forks, are they any good, I mean for just XC work, general use ? What are the oldest forks and do they do elastomer forks ?

Would they be fitting for an early nineties bike ?

Suntour xc pro was on par if not better than XT , and it was very popular too .

nowadays , trying to get some xc pro is difficult and very expensive .

early forks were cheap and nasty but more recent models seem to have improved a lot .

BITD I was a Suntour rider. It was good stuff. But When Shimano came out with Hyper-glide. That changed ever thing. And they have been king ever since.

Well,

Never had anything Suntour until now... I've mounted all XC Pro on my KLEIN Attitude. But until I get my wheels back from tensioning/trueing and until I get a chain I won't know how good it is. I must say that I like "the schtuff". Their thumb shifters are uber uber light and function really well (I noticed when mounting and adjusting the stuff with a test chain and the rear hub in the frame only).

I remember that BITD a lot of the more expensive bikes had Suntour. Like with Specialized, everything medium was DX and high-end was XC Pro or XC Expert. Stumpjumpers were all Shimano, but the Team (the black one with red decals) was XC Pro. Also S-Works was all Suntour parts up until 1991 or 1992 I think...

Anyway, I'm kinda curious how my KLEIN will ride with XC Pro... and I can tell you it was bl**dy hard finding a working/matching front mech (because I don't have a MD crank but a TopLine).

My local bike mech has a P7 ,dripping in top end suntour
Xc pro superb or something like it [cant remember exactly]
Nice to see citrus without shimano

I had my Orange Aluminium Elite specced with Suntour XC Comp MD and HS33 Racelines bitd. It cost me £300 less than the XT equivalent and seemed to work almost as well.

The splines on the hub and cassette are completely different to the big S's ones (the newer Suntour is Shimano compatible).

I've still got my rear hub and cassette around somewhere. I'll dig it out and get a few pics if anyone's interested.

I think I heard that SunTour of the early nineties used rebadged bits from other manufacturers, dia compe being one of them, this might have been the cause of some incompatibility issues I heard about, something to do with licensing I think. Shimano on the other hand did not have these restrictions, so went ahead to dominate the market.

But my original interest was, the Shimano XT rear derailleur, physically, it looks the same as the Suntour XC PRO rear derailleur, I did wonder who designed and made it, and who was re badging.

(Derailleur, derailer, rear mech, it is a de- railer, an engineers nightmare, when engineers work to keep drive chains on sprockets, cyclists want to chuck them off at will.)

I used to have SunTour, Huret and Simplex on my old bikes, I knew of SunTour, but when I went into the MTB world, there was Shimano, my first thoughts was, they make fishing reels.

All I remember about Suntour is how most of it broke on a friends Pathfinder back in the early 90s....was bottom of the range stuff though.

XC pro was good looking kit, it was specd on the top of the range MFX in 1990/91....IIRC the brakes were 'mechanical advantage' units

I had Suntour XC Ltd as original spec on a 92 Cinder Cone. Various parts were uprated to XC Pro . Thumbies are excellent, as is the front hub. The levers were Dia Comp as you say. Rear end eventually went over to XT as replacement Suntour parts became harder to find ( I think Suntour went through a bad time in the mid 90's). So now I've 8 speed XT operated through Suntour thumbies. Works fine.

Where ever possible I use non shimano bits if only to be different.

I like Suntour, Sachs-Huret, Maillard etc

XC-Pro Suntour is very nice and Thumbies are great. Suntour shifters were often quite inovative such as wishbone thumbies and Command shifters.

I like