Suntour ?

[utahdog2003]

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 ?

Suntour stuff was in some cases very nice. The derailleurs, shifters, bottom brackets and cranks are second to none, certainly nicer than XT, and some would argue that Micro Drive cranks paired with a Grease Guard bottom bracket was a nicer set-up than M900 XTR cranks.

Suntour shortcoming in my experience, were the lack of development in cassette tooth profile to aid in shifting efficiency, and the problematic method of attaching cassette to hub, compared to Shimano.

The hot setup in my day was XC Pro for derailleurs, shifters, cranks and bottom bracket, and then Shimano for the hubs and cassette, or Sachs Aris freewheels on a nice spin-on hub like a Phil FSA.

Both XC Pro and XC Pro Micro Drive, as well as XC Comp and XC Expert, are nice groups, and they fetch some good prices on eBay, so get your cash handy... Avoid lesser groups like XCE, and the horride Express shifters. Superbe Pro was a phenomenal road group also. The Command Shifters are a work of art.

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 ?

Don't get it twisted here, Maeda Industries, the old parent of Suntour, the Suntour we love, never did forks. As I recall, Suntour released forks only after getting into bed with SR Sakae. They are all entry level fodder...so you'd be better off with some crappy Manitou Spyder or RS Indy or some other noodly POS.

 

[MikeD]

My first MTB had Suntour XCE on it, my second had X-1 (much nicer), Junked the X-Press underbar shifters for XC Comp thumbies, picked up some XC Pro levers, upgraded the mechs and so on. All nice stuff, but the shifting was never on a par with Shimano - Suntour didn't have a floating top jockey wheel, so it was finicky to set up and didn't stay accurate for long. There was a sweet spot when the mech pivots were just worn enough to give it all a bit of a margin of error, but that didn't last long before it just went all sloppy ;-) Never used a Suntour hub, though - Sachs Maillard screw-on freewheels on Campy hubs.

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.

All derailleurs looked pretty similar back then. Those two have nothing in common beyond general layout.

 

[MikeD]

 

[Xesh]

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.

SunTour and Shimano did things differently because they were separate companies. Neither wanted to pay licence fees to the other so they made parts in their own way. Hence the incompatibility of some parts.

Shimano owned the patent to HG as well as the cassette fixing so SunTour had to do it differently.

The rear derailleur similarity is just a coincidence. There's only so many ways you can design the same part.

 

[MikeD]

Shimano owned the patent to HG as well as the cassette fixing so SunTour had to do it differently.

Also that floating top jockey. Of course, the irony is that Suntour invented the slant-parallelogram rear derailleur, the expiry of which patent Shimano had to wait before taking over the universe ;-)

 

[reanimation]

I had XCE or XCM or summat on my GT Tequesta, it was alright but clunky, or maybe I just craved Shimano, it was low in the range so that wont have helped. i eventually upgraded away into Shimano with a few niggly Suntour bits.
I did love the Xpress under bar shifters great for urban hill riding, still got em but unsure if they will work with a shimano cassette and mech ???

 

[slimjoe]

Suntour

I remember saving like mad to upgrade my Shimano Exage cranks to a lovely set of SUNTOUR XCD 6000 think thats what it was called :?:

like an earlier comment said, the cranks and some other parts were real sweet but i always struggled to get Suntour to work on a level with SHIMANO

 

[FluffyChicken]

I have got XC Comp MD on one bike and just taken of most of M900 XTR on the other, for some modern XT/SLX mechs and chainsets.
M900 is far better and was the kick in the teeth to finish off SunTour imho.
Now neither compare to the modern stuff, but the modern stuff is well er modern with a lack of 'looks like somebody cared when making and designing it'

XC Comp MD is basically just XC Pro MD without the greasports (WTB port btw) and a few part are a touch heavier, things like the thumbies are the same with different names etc.
Another thing to remeber is nobody else could make the freewheel, a major part in the ease of use for HG. It was easy to use, most mid range bikes would have it. Hence people would stick with shimano (most people do not mix and match ..

It wasn't until Campagnolo brought out a version of the freehub compatible with HG cassettes, now I think used by everyone else but Shimano, incl Hope etc.. (hence Hope used screw on at the start). I think it was something silly to do with number of bearing used :s

Anyway, get XC Pro or Comp and you'll be fine. Just skip the APII rear end as they are bloody expensive to get a casette for. Run Shimano, you can always use the APII spacing if needed.

Since 1995 was my last real biking year, I remember reading somthing about Suntour giving up then. Pulled out of America market ? which pretty much collapsed the company.


EDIT:
Just found a good link to read..
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hadland/page35.htm

 

[drystonepaul]

In 1992/93 Suntour became SR Suntour but I'm still not sure whether this was a takeover or a merger and anything to do with SR Sakae.
Anyway pretty soon the full range Suntour groupsets was slashed away, and in 1995 the major push as the 'Plug and Play' concept which was essentially components which were fully compatible and interchangeable with Shimano components. This spelt the end of the line for the quality components which pretty much lead the way up until then.
Suntour also introduced some of the major 'advancements' we now take for granted.
For example Suntour introduced 'Micro-Drive' a full 2 years before Shimano copied it in 1994 with 'Compact-Drive' and Suntour had the patent on the parallelogram rear mech until the patent expired and everyone else waded in.
It's a shame that since then Suntour have concentrated on the budget end of the market and produce some of the worst suspension fork/pogo sticks out there.

Heres a link to good old Mombat about Suntour:
http://mombat.org/Suntour.htm

 

[drystonepaul]

Don't know what happened there. I'd just written a nice long essay about Suntour and it didn't submit.
I copied most of it from here anyway...

http://mombat.org/Suntour.htm