1988 Suntour Small Parts Catalog, oddities

[Joe Bernard]

Cross-posted from Internet-Bob because I know lots of Rivendell people like shiney Suntour bits. I found this on Craigslist last week. I found several unusual bits I'd never heard of:

Ergonomic MTB grips called Palm Control, which I presume were grip-shifters similar to Campagnolo in which the entire grip moved for shifts.

Have you ever seen indexed stem shifters? Me neither. They had friction-left/friction-index-right and a single righthand fiction-index shifter for bikes without front derailers.

Two rear derailers with something called a "pre-select mechanism". I have no idea what that is.

The number of groups they were running in 1988 is staggering. Paging through the book, it's hard to believe they were gone six years later.

Joe Bernard

Vallejo, CA.

[Jeremy Till]

I imagine "pre-select" mechanism might be some kind of spring-loaded cable anchor bolt, allowing the rider to move the shifter a couple of gears while stopped, so the derailleur would shift immediately once they got going.  Shimano "light action" derailleurs from that era had the same feature.  Makes them damned difficult to adjust, however.