Suntour Power Thumb Shifters

[J Imler]

Couldn't wait for Silver 2's. Bought NOS Suntours. Gotta say the ratcheting noise I hear makes me very optimistic I've got something good. Anyone using these? I'll report back once installed, likely tomorrow. Great looking too.

[Joe Bernard]

I had them on a Rambouillet a few years back. It's a perfect shifter..I'm snapping up the first set of Twos I can get my hands on.

[Jeremy Tavan]

I just mounted some (similar) Suntour XC thumb shifters today on the Rosco Bubbe step-through I'm building up. I'd tried the Sunrace one-at-a-time that Rivendell sell, and just didn't like the right shifter - to avoid slippage, it had to be cranked down so tight that it wasn't fun to shift. The Suntour is a lot smoother and feels great. They don't allow quite as much adjustment of exit angle as the Sunrace, but it's enough. I'd buy new clones if available. I hadn't expected to go all friction on this bike, but it may just work out that way.

[Evan E.]

I had Suntour thumb shifters on my Sam. They worked great--pulled enough cable to shift across a nine-speed cassette. Loved that ratchet sound.

[Patrick Moore]

I replaced my second set of broken Silver BES (lever cracked when bike fell over) with these, and actually prefer them -- I'd long praised Silvers as superior, but I changed my mind. I find the smaller, thicker, rubber-sleeved levers easier to shift by grabbing it with my fist; and I prefer the greater cable pull of the Suntours -- mine require less than 90 degrees for a full 10 speed cassette, though that's with a high movement:cable pull 8 speed era rd. With a modern, lower-movement rd, I think the Suntours would be perfect.

On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 6:54 PM, J Imler <imle...@gmail.com> wrote:

Couldn't wait for Silver 2's. Bought NOS Suntours. Gotta say the ratcheting noise I  hear makes me very optimistic I've got something good. Anyone using these? I'll report back once installed, likely tomorrow. Great looking too.

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[R. Alexis]

I have some SunTour XC friction shifters in use on my 1994 Bridgestone MB-1 retro build. They along with a bunch of other parts originally were on my 1986 Mongoose ATB that I ended up warrantying. The shifters were on the replacement 1991 Mongoose IBOC Sport before I changed them out for index 7 speed SunTour XC-LTD thumb shifters.

I really like the shifting of the friction shifters again. I had no issues when I got it built up and rode it. This is after having index shifting rear bikes for a while. I since have gotten a second bike rebuilt using some NOS SunTour Sprint downtube shifters. Had those shifters since before Rivendell finally bought out the stock They are on my 1988 Schwinn Voyageur

Will more than likely end up with a set of the Silver 2 shifters, even though I have some Suntour XC-Comp ones.

Reginald "Shifting back to the future" Alexis

[Grant @ Rivendell]

Reginald Alexis???!!!!!! so nice to hear/see that name again. I hope you're well and all the good stuff.

[ant ritchey]

which ones? the big boxy silver guys?

if so - i love 'em to death! must have minimum of 2 sets at any time, some combo of ride-able bikes and parts bin. i've hoarded more than 2 sets, i must admit...

On Saturday, January 20, 2018 at 5:54:02 PM UTC-8, J Imler wrote:

[Garth]

Yes, I've happily enjoyed multiple pairs of them since ye 'ol Stumpjumper I bought in '83. I now have many pairs of both styles, with and w/o the "fairing" so to speak. With and w/o the rubber covers on the grips.

No dt shifter ever felt or works and holds shifts so well, even the Sprint ones.  I have never bothered to try other thumbshifters because these just work. I had replaced both bands on my original ones, so they'll keep truckin' and truckin'.

Simply a wonderful shifter !

[J Imler]

These are the ones I picked up. 

[Birdman]

Nice!  I just bought a great set from Ant's back stock for the Atlantis build.  Can't wait to roll with 'em.

[Belopsky]

Not to crash the party but I have a set of those Suntour I want to sell. 22.2mm clamp. Can't use them on my bars that I thought were 22.2 but theyre 23.8 so...

Mine are these: http://velobase.com/CompImages/Shifter/0203796F-1215-46BA-8B1A-C04CF4702723.jpeg

$40 shipped

[dougP]

I've been using those on my Atlantis for a while now.  Picked up from another listmember.  I like the action and the adjustability.  Still going for a pair of Silver 2s when they become available. 

dougP

On Saturday, January 20, 2018 at 5:54:02 PM UTC-8, J Imler wrote:

[Ed Fausto]

All this discussion on Suntour thumb shifters makes me want to purchase a pair while waiting for the Silver 2's

Which particular Suntour thumb shifter can be used for 8 speed cogs?

Can this be installed inside the handlebar?

Thanks guys for any help.

Ed

--

[J Imler]

Here's a link to my setup - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Otd4vV1utzGCgHK2NVYn_M8QFwlkHUIz?usp=sharing Shout out to Mark in Beacon for the Burley trailer recommendation. My little boy is digging it.

Excuse my after dinner gut in pic 3. I'm enjoying the shifter and shifter placement. This particular placement makes the cable and housing do a curly q type of thing but works no problem. My bike has a 7 speed freewheel.

On Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 5:10:04 PM UTC-8, ed wrote:

All this discussion on Suntour thumb shifters makes me want to purchase a pair while waiting for the Silver 2's

Which particular Suntour thumb shifter can be used for 8 speed cogs?

Can this be installed inside the handlebar?

Thanks guys for any help.

Ed

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 8:50 AM, Belopsky <belopol...@gmail.com> wrote:

Not to crash the party but I have a set of those Suntour I want to sell. 22.2mm clamp. Can't use them on my bars that I thought were 22.2 but theyre 23.8 so...

Mine are these: http://velobase.com/CompImages/Shifter/0203796F-1215-46BA-8B1A-C04CF4702723.jpeg

$40 shipped

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[Garth]

Any of them Ed !
Friction does not limit or is limited by the number of cogs, given the intended cable pull ratio. I have used mine from 5-9 speeds, easy breezy. They have a huge range.

[Ed Fausto]

Thanks Garth, I appreciate the help.

Now I need to find a pair to try on my Cheviot :-)

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 7:38 PM, Garth <gart...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any of them Ed !
 Friction does not limit or is limited by the number of cogs, given the intended cable pull ratio. I have used mine from 5-9 speeds, easy breezy. They have a huge range.

[Grant Petersen]

The Silver2 shifters--many of you know this--are anatomically nearly identical to the SunTours from '82. We tried to improve where we could, but there wasn't much opportunity. The clamp is more versatile, fits more diameters. The rotation method no longer used the holes, but goes with florets on the perimeter. Sorry about the language here, don't feel like you should understand that, but basically it uses the same rotation system as SunRace thumbies. The one we designed (the clamp) was, I think, better still, but the front-runner is still good. We had free run of the lever and submitted the clamp, but Dia-Compe has its own ideas for the clamp, and it's still plenty good, and improvement over the early SunTours.

I expect to see them in mid to late March. We've already mounted the lever (just a left) and tested its ergo and all, and it's fine. The thing is, when it comes out, we expect a certain amount of monday morning QB-ing, and that'll be fine, part of the fun, but the lever is really quite good as it is, and without the emotional backing of our customers in general and this group especially, things like this don't happen.

Modern shifters-STI, trigger shifters, all that--really have been perfected. They work perfectly, and from that point of view there's no reason NOT to use them. It's just hard to argue why not...  For me it comes down to a mix of a philosophical approach that .. is hard to put into words without sounding like the unabomber, but it has to do with saying no to ultimate convenience in the interest of integrating your brain and finger mechanics into the working of a simple compound machine composed of a wheel (the cable drum of the shifter) and a lever, the shifter itself. It also has to do with resisting the urge for maximizing overkill in recreational activities, and not accepting that it's stubbornness or stupidity to do that (to resist).

We all know where the tide is going with everything, and I'd vote for more than half of it, I'm sure, but there has to be a line. This reminds me right now, of when I hired on at Bstone in December '84 and thought the tag-line for the bikes was sappy or hokey or stupid. It was "The Body and the Bike —the Synergistic Combination."  Looking at bikes and bodies now, I think that's not so stupid anymore. Manual shifting--and maybe even traditional indexing is part of that, in view of what's right around the corner of the pike--is like digging in your heels at the 50-yard line and not letting your role in riding the bike diminish as much as the component makers and the desperate bike industry wants it to be diminished. They can and are selling diminishment as advancement, but that's funky because it assumes there's no pleasure in "the synergistic combination." It's FUN to shift, it's FUN to miss a shift now and then, to be a flubby human, and then to correct it on the retry. Every time your shift misses or isn't perfect, it's a reminder that you're a fallible human operating a simple machine, and of course you want your shifts to take all the time, but nobody dies if they don't.    The Silver2 shifters will be pretty good. Good enough! I just thought of something to wonder about. Hm. OK!

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[Mark in Beacon]

Glad your little guy likes it--great piece of gear for kids. Nice overall setup, too.

oo

[Patrick Moore]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Make things too perfect and they become, in my opinion and experience, boring, or at least less interesting than a more primitive technology that requires compensation in the form of greater skill and attention -- rather like making bread by hand instead of using a bread machine. When things are packaged and too easy, you need additives to make them interesting -- go fastest, win the race, split times, what have you. Primitive shifting perfectly complements a "just ride" value set,* and the opposite gives you, or can and did give you, that silly woman who wrote soul searchingly about how she had to trick herself into overcoming the malaise caused by too much "training" that made her hate riding.

Principles are black and white and set in stone, but their applications vary indefinitely, as much as do individuals. But I find -- hell, forget about those damned shifty geary coasty things; I find riding fixed -- and not merely ss -- the most fun, most interesting, and most rewarding sort of riding, precisely because it is primitive and "less". It is the less that makes it interesting. If I had just one bike, it would be a fixed gear; as it is, I have 4, and 3 are fixed.

Presently my dirt road bike (we have 3" sand to be negotiated) has multiple gears; 10 mismatched (14-28, cobbled from scavenged cassettes, 8sp, 9sp, and 10 sp) shifted by Bar Cons with a 740n low leverage ratio (ie, little lever movement for a lot of derailleur movement) rd. And I like it. The right Bar Con moves less than 90* to sweep the entire cassette. This requires care and learning, and I still have to trim from time to time, but so what?

Those of you who like adventure novels, try the Patrick O'Brian Jack Aubrey series. One of the fascinating elements is the realistic depiction of full-rigged-sailing-ship technology at its high point in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and from reviews I've read, O'Brian gets it all right. But remarkable, fully mature and refined materials, forms, and usages; large sailing ships could stay at sea longer than any modern vessels except perhaps nuclear-fuel powered ones. Of course, this required huge numbers of men doing hard and dangerous manual labor -- out of a yardarm at night in a gale in freezing rain -- but the technology, and the corresponding skills, were undeniably perfect in a way that nothing was before or has been since.

* There is a recent Dave Moulton blog that in its own way perfectly exemplified "just ride". Dave is 83 and rides a modern bike; but he does it for fun at his own, and not somebody else's -- or the zeitgeist's or the marketers' or the bike mags'-- pace.

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 1:12 PM, Grant Petersen <gran...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

[Mark in Beacon]

Yes to all this. Every now and then, threads over on iBob touch on this idea in some way; I am guilty of occasionally steering  threads about discs in this direction. I don't believe it is only a matter of "what you grew up with" or being a Luddite, or a "retrogrouch;" there is that line we cross, with all technologies. Ivan Illich defines this line in "Two Watersheds", the first chapter in his book, Tools For Conviviality. It's available free online, and a useful way of helping to frame the existential issue of the relationship between humans and technologies. As humans, we don't think much about consequences when something "helps" us do something faster or easier, and we can get other people to give us money for it. Illich, by the way, was a big fan of bicycles. I won't quote any of that (though I have on iBob over the years), more fun to find it on your own.

More good stuff, from other angles: Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies, written in the late 1980s. More recently, there is Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on Technologies that Limit our Autonomy, Self-Sufficiency and Freedom, by Dmitri Orlov. 

In terms of The Body and the Bike—the Synergistic Combination, I once wrote a short essay, Bicycle Brains, that relates to this in a way. 

I enjoy ruminating on this line of thought, and if we ever hope to sort out some of the mess we're in, I think some of the answers will be found by looking in this direction. And after chewing on it all for a while, marking your own 50-yard line and digging in is not an inconsequential act.

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 3:12:52 PM UTC-5, Grant @ Rivendell wrote:

  

Modern shifters-STI, trigger shifters, all that--really have been perfected. They work perfectly, and from that point of view there's no reason NOT to use them. It's just hard to argue why not...  For me it comes down to a mix of a philosophical approach that .. is hard to put into words without sounding like the unabomber, but it has to do with saying no to ultimate convenience in the interest of integrating your brain and finger mechanics into the working of a simple compound machine composed of a wheel (the cable drum of the shifter) and a lever, the shifter itself. It also has to do with resisting the urge for maximizing overkill in recreational activities, and not accepting that it's stubbornness or stupidity to do that (to resist).

We all know where the tide is going with everything, and I'd vote for more than half of it, I'm sure, but there has to be a line. This reminds me right now, of when I hired on at Bstone in December '84 and thought the tag-line for the bikes was sappy or hokey or stupid. It was "The Body and the Bike."  Looking at bikes and bodies now, I think that's not so stupid anymore. Manual shifting--and maybe even traditional indexing is part of that, in view of what's right around the corner of the pike--is like digging in your heels at the 50-yard line and not letting your role in riding the bike diminish as much as the component makers and the desperate bike industry wants it to be diminished. They can and are selling diminishment as advancement, but that's funky because it assumes there's no pleasure in "the synergistic combination." It's FUN to shift, it's FUN to miss a shift now and then, to be a flubby human, and then to correct it on the retry. Every time your shift misses or isn't perfect, it's a reminder that you're a fallible human operating a simple machine, and of course you want your shifts to take all the time, but nobody dies if they don't.    The Silver2 shifters will be pretty good. Good enough! I just thought of something to wonder about. Hm. OK!

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 11:28 AM, Ed Fausto <emfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Garth, I appreciate the help.

Now I need to find a pair to try on my Cheviot :-)

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 7:38 PM, Garth <gart...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any of them Ed !
 Friction does not limit or is limited by the number of cogs, given the intended cable pull ratio. I have used mine from 5-9 speeds, easy breezy. They have a huge range.

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[lum gim fong]

I first rode road bikes with Sora brifters. Physically hard to shift for me. Circa 2007-11.

2012 I got first Rivendell with barends and I loved them at first shift. So simple. So fun. Satisfying and physically easy to use.

[Mark in Beacon]

It did not take long for a nice little example to come along and help illustrate my point. Bonus, it has a large bicycle element. This link was posted on iBob a few hours ago:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072

 Mark in Beacon wrote:...As humans, we don't think much about consequences when something "helps" us do something faster or easier, and we can get other people to give us money for it..

[lconley]

It has been 30 years or so since I read it, but this discussion reminds me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Laing

[Abcyclehank]

Time to reread Zen. Personally I reread in every 10-15 years. 1st time when I dropped out of college before children. 2nd after graduating from college with two school aged children. 3rd while both kids were in college.
Next year or two while retired early and waiting for grandchildren.

Sincerely,
Ryan Hankinson
West Michigan