The Man Who Made--And Broke-- SunTour

Writing about SunTour yesterday got me, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Breakfast of Champions, "woozy with deja vu".  (How can you not love that phrase?)

You see, I started to take long rides as the '70's Bike Boom was gaining force.  That was also almost the exact time that American cyclists began to glom onto SunTour derailleurs.  

Although SunTour's wares would have dominated the North American (and other) cycling markets on their own merits, the fact that, around 1980, more bikes were equipped with the Japanese company's derailleurs, shifters and freewheels--and more of those parts were sold as replacements--than all of the other component manufacturers combined, is the result, at least in part, of the work of one person.

 


I'm talking about Frank Berto.  If you're a bit younger than I am, you probably think of him as the author of The Dancing Chain, a book for gear geeks if there ever was one. (It's an engaging read nonetheless.)  But for those of us who were around in the prehistoric days of cycling, when all bike manuals were written in Latin (OK, Italian and sometimes French and English), he will be forever known as the technical editor of Bicycling magazine.

Now, I know some of you (again, who weren't around in those times) might be scratching your heads and saying, "Bicycling had a technical editor"?  Those of you who are a bit younger might not believe that magazines had technical editors.  And, if you're younger still, you might not believe that magazines existed.

Trust me, they did.  And Bicycling--as much as I and others complained about it--was actually something more than the advertising vehicle or lifestyle tab it's been for at least two decades. 

As he tells it on his website,  Frank Berto bought a secondhand Schwinn Varsity in 1971, when he became involved with his sons' Boy Scout troop.  He was then a 42-year-old mechanical engineer who, until that time, hadn't been on a bike in more than two decades.  On his first ride with his son's troop, all of the young whippersnappers blew past him on a long and winding hill that would be his Road to Damascus."If I had a bigger sprocket in the back, I could pedal up this lousy hill," he thought.  Shortly thereafter, he rode to his local bike shop and bought a SunTour 14-34 freewheel (Varsities came with 14-28) and a SunTour VGT rear derailleur.  

He tried to install them himself, but realized he had no clue as to what to do.  Nor, as it turned out, did the shop that sold him the parts.  None of the bicycle-related books (remember those?) in his local library were of any help.

His yearlong odyssey to lower the gears on that tank called the Varsity ended with him writing, first for Bike World and, not long afterward, for Bicycling.  After mining his own experiences, he conducted a series of tests and published his ratings of derailleurs that were available at the time.  The message of much of his work from that time can be more or less summed up with this sentence: "If you are unhappy with your shifting, the SunTour VGT is your best prescription".

The thing is, he was right.  The VGT, which cost about $10 at the time, could handle the freewheel he installed on the Varsity--and more.  And, because of its design, it shifted more easily and accurately on smaller racing freewheels than even the derailleurs supposedly designed for them.  Those derailleurs from Campagnolo and Huret cost four times as much.  Even the SunTour Cyclone, which came out a year or two after Berto made his pronouncement, cost less than half as much as those European derailleurs--and was lighter (and prettier) than any except the Huret Jubilee.

Ironically, for all that he did to build SunTour's reputation, he may have unwittingly contributed to its undoing.  When Huret came out with the Duopar touring derailleur in the late 1970's, he enthused about it. Up to that time, SunTour's shifting--especially on wide-range touring gears--was light-years ahead of everyone else's.  That anyone could make something better, even if only marginally so, seemed inconceivable.   And for Frank Berto to say so was like the CEO of the Bank of America endorsing socialism.

By that time, the folks working for SunTour were paying as much attention to Berto's articles as Anna Wintour does to fashion shows.  They panicked and made some ill-advised changes to some of their products.  

A few years after that, Berto praised one of the results of SunTour's changes:  the Superbe Tech derailleur.  He praised it even more lavishly than he did any previous SunTour product--or the Duopar.  It shifted as well as he said, and was beautiful.  But it also had some fatal design flaws--as did the Duopar--that truncated its lifespan to about 3000 km.  By that time, SunTour's patents had expired, and Shimano had adopted SunTour's most salient feature--the slant parallelogram--even faster than President Bush signed the Patriot Act after 9/11.  

Oh, how I miss SunTour.  And Bicycling magazine, when it had a technical editor.

Un Mirage, Aujourd'hui Et Hier

If you entered the world of cycling during the 1970's, as I did, you recall certain iconic bikes.  They're not necessarily the high-end ones:  You most likely would have been riding one of those if you had become a cyclist earlier or were wealthy.  I'm thinking, instead, of bikes like the Peugeot U-08, Raleigh Grand Prix and Super Course, Fuji S-10s and Nishiki Olympic and International.  They were the bikes on which many of us learned about cycling:  that is to say, when we went from being kids who banged around on bikes to adolescents and young adults who commuted, trained, raced, toured or were messengers astride two wheels.

Another bike of that genre was the Motobecane Mirage.  I was reminded of that yesterday, when I saw one parked.

Of course, a Mirage from my youth would not have looked like that:  For one thing, red on black, seemingly ubiquitous today, was not quite as common a color scheme.  Even more to the point, one of those old Mirages would not have built in China, or this way:

No, those old bikes would not have had their aluminum frame tubes joined by cobbly welds.  Instead, like most bikes of any quality made at that time, their steel tubes would have been fitted and brazed into lugs.

The result would have been something like this specimen from around 1981:

From Mr. Martin's Website

Like earlier Mirages, this one is constructed from high-carbon steel tubes and lugs.  Though it's one step above entry-level, it had workmanship, a finish and ride better than other bikes in its category. 

Motobecane is said to be the first European bike-maker to equip new bikes with Japanese drivetrain components like the SunTour derailleurs and Sakae Ringyo crankset you see on this bike.  Those components--especially the derailleurs--were significant improvements over the gear found on earlier iterations of the Mirage:

The derailleurs are Huret Allvit:  the same ones found on many entry-level European bikes during the Bike Boom era.  (Schwinn equipped several of its models with rebadged versions of the same derailleurs.) While as advanced when it was introduced in 1958 as the first personal computers were two decades later, they became anachronisms just as quickly.  So did the steel cottered crankse after Japanese companies like Sakae Ringyo (a.k.a. SR) came out with relatively low-priced cotterless cranksets around the same time SunTour introduced its VGT rear derailleur, of which many are still in use nearly two decades after SunTour stopped making derailleurs.

Now, some components on the new black Mirage I saw yesterday are certainly vast improvements over (though not as attractive as) the stuff on the green Mirage--and, some would argue, on the blue one. And even if the new machine is a good rider, somehow I will never be able to see it as a Mirage from my youth. (Pun intended!)

P.S.  I actually owned and rode a Mirage--which was my commuter/beater--for about two years.  It was like the green one in the photo, except that mine was black with purple seat tube and head panels.  I loved the way it looked, and rode.  Sadly, like several of my commuter/beaters, I crashed it.  Or, more precisely, I rode it into one of the deepest potholes in the history of paved roads and cracked the top and seat tubes just behind the head lugs.

Monkey, Longhorn Or Ape Hanger

One of my favorite non-bike blogs is Old Picture of the Day.  Sometimes the images are worth looking at purely for aesthetic reasons; almost all of the others are interesting in some aspect of life, past or present, they reveal.

In each post, a (usually brief) comment accompanies the photo.  Those are worth reading because they convey "PJM"'s deep appreciation--and, sometimes, personal connections--to the photographs he collects and displays.

His post today included this photo, along with a reminisce about his own childhood bike, which was very similar to the one in the picture:

One thing I found interesting about the responses he got to his post is how they described the handlebars.  I have heard to bars like the ones in the photo referred to as "Longhorn" bars (even though I grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey!)  and the bars on bikes like the Schwinn Sting Ray and Raleigh Chopper (the ones with "banana seats")as "Ape Hangers".  But one commenter heard them referred to as "monkey" bars".  What's really funny, to me, is that some of the adults I knew during the  '70's "Bike Boom" referred to the those funny-looking dropped handlebars on those newfangled ten-speeds as "monkey bars"--meaning, I presume, that only a monkey could ride them.

 

Brazed-On Amnesia

When I first became serious about cycling--around the time that the early '70's Bike Boom was gathering steam--almost no bikes available in the US had brazed-on bosses for water bottle cages or shift levers/cable guides, let alone for racks. Most bikes didn't even have fitments for brake cables:  Most high--performance bikes of the time, like my Peugeot PX-10, had their rear brake cables clamped to the top tube.

Even the custom bike builders of the time didn't braze such fittings onto their frames.  All of the guidebooks of the time told us that brazing weakened the metal at the point at which it was brazed and therefore risked cracking or breakage.

A few years later, when I was working in a bike shop, I did see a couple of brazed-on shift lever bosses that broke off their frames.  But those were on cheaper bikes built from thin-walled tubing.   

Of course, at that time, I --like most novitiate American cyclists--did not know about the French constructeurs or British custom builders, who had been brazing bits onto their frames at least since the 1920's.  Actually, some of those builders--most notably Rene Herse--actually made racks, water bottle cages and such an integral part of the frames they built.

And, apparently, some not-so-elite pre-Bike Boom bikes had brazed-on bits, like this circa 1964 Schwinn Varsity I saw parked around the corner from my apartment:

Those levers, like the derailleurs on the bike, were made by Huret for Schwinn.  Those levers--like so many other French parts of the time--had style, if not engineering.  (Installing or removing cables--which you did often if you had a Huret Allvit derailleur like the one on the bike in the photo--was a project unto itself.)  As for the brazed-on bosses:  I think Schwinn was able to do them because the tubing on the frame was thicker than that of most other ten-speeds.

A couple of years later, the Varsity--as well as the Continental and Super Sport--would come equipped with massive stem-mounted shift levers.  And their top-of the line bike, the hand-made Paramount, would offer nary a brazed-on fitting.

Environmentalism And Cycling

 

From Chronicles of the Voyager

My birth as a "serious" cyclist--that is to say, my interest in 
riding "long distances" (i.e., beyond my neighborhood) and better bikes--coincided, more or less, with the early '70's "Bike Boom".

Although some professors and other professionals rode their bikes to work, and there was a small but growing number of adult cyclists (with whom I rode), for anyone to continue pedaling when he or she was old enough to have a driver's license was still considered a bit geeky, vaguely counter-cultural and even subversive.

Then, there was a lot of talk about the environmental benefits of cycling.  Back then, scientists were saying that the world's oil, coal, natural gas and other fuels weren't going to last forever If we were lucky, they'd last another century, maybe two.  That was, of course, if we didn't make ourselves extinct with all of the pollution from burning those fuels.

Ironically, the first energy crisis that followed the Middle East Oil Embargo of 1973-74 all but put an end to the bike boom.  Sure, some of us continued to ride bikes, and even buy new ones.  But in spite of al of the attempts to link cycling with environmentalism. most people bought bikes for recreation or simply because it was fashionable to do so.  Once the price of petroleum spiked in the US (though it was still nowhere near what most Europeans or the Japanese paid), unemployment skyrocketed. A commuter or some other cyclist who uses his or her bike to help him or herself earn a living might buy a new bike, if it's necessary, and continue to buy parts and accessories or use the services of their local bike mechanics.  But those with no such commitment aren't going to spend their money, especially if they've lost their jobs.

As history progressed (which is just a somewhat pompously academic way of saying "as time moved on"), some new cyclists came into the fold and some of us continued to ride, although we might have morphed into different kinds of cyclists from the ones we were in the beginning.  

One thing I couldn't help to notice, however, is that by the 1980's, any mention of environmentalism or even energy conservation had disappeared from discussions about cycling.  Such a state of affairs continued into the '90's and even the early part of this century.  One reason is that the cost of gasoline fell in relation to the overall cost of living.  Another, I think, is that cycling increasingly became the province of upper-middle- to high-income men and was increasingly seen as part of a "lifestyle" in much the same way as buying an SUV was.

Over the past few years, I am noticing that talk of the environment has returned to discussions about cycling.  I hear it in my conversations with cyclists and read it in bicycle-related publications, even in mainstream media coverage about cycling.

One reason is, of course, that gasoline has become more expensive (though, once again, is still not nearly as expensive as it is in Europe or Japan).  That makes some people more aware of the finite-ness of our resources.  Also, I think more cyclists have seen their favorite riding places turned into malls, condominium developments or despoiled in other ways. Finally, I think another reason is that there are more female cyclists.  Perhaps I am thinking in terms of gender stereotypes, but it seems to me that places with strong environmental movements tend to be places in which women play a greater role in policy- and other decision-making processes.

Women, Bikes And Equality

Yesterday I wrote about a rather curious phenomenon:  the cities and countries with the strongest cycling cultures aren't necessarily the ones with weather and terrain most people believe are best for cycling.  As examples, I cited Boston, New York, San Francisco and Portland in the US and such European locales as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Last week, I wrote about the relationship between the two major bike booms (1890s-early 1900s and 1970s) and the women's rights movements of those periods.

From Brain Pickings

Perhaps it's serendipitous that I came across a United Nations Development Programme Report which ranked countries, among other things, in gender equality. Tell me whether you are surprised to see these countries in the Top 10 (as of 2012): 

1. Netherlands 
2. Sweden 
3. (tie) Denmark 
3. (tie) Switzerland 
5. Norway 
6. Finland 
7. Germany 
8. Slovenia 
9. France 
10.Iceland.

After seeing that, I did a bit of research. (OK, I spent a few minutes on Google.) I found a number of reports that rank Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington DC and Madison, Wisconsin among the best US cities for gender equality.

Is it a coincidence that the countries and cities in which cycling and cyclists are most mainstream are also the ones where a woman has the best chance to get a good education, paid what she's worth and the health care she needs?

Just askin'.

Riding To End The World As They Knew It

In an earlier post, I wrote about a remark Susan B. Anthony made:

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

Historians, professional and amateur, are taking notice of something that has been neglected, or simply overlooked, for a century:  the relationship between cycling and women's liberation.

It's more than interesting to note that the heydays first modern feminist movement and the first "bike boom" almost exactly coincided during the last decade of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 20th. As I and others have noted, the bicycle gave women, for the first time, an independent means of transportation and led to the design of clothing that was less restrictive than the hoopskirts and corsets "proper" ladies wore until that time.

Of course, those were the very reasons why some--almost all of them men--thought that in seeing their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters astride two wheels, they were witnessing the decline and fall of civilization.   To wit;

 “Cycling tends to destroy the sweet simplicity of her girlish nature; besides how dreadful it would be if, by some accident, she were to fall into the arms of a strange man.” 

As "Sam B.", the author of the blog Fit, Feminist and (Almost) Fifty wryly notes, "I can't imagine falling off a bike into someone's arms (that would take rather a lot of coordination)".  As for me, no one ever said that anything destroyed the sweet simplicity of my girlish nature.  For that matter, no one has ever imputed sweet simplicity to me. At least, I'm not aware of anyone who's done such a thing.

But I digress.  The irrational fear expressed in the minister's quote about how cycling makes good girls go bad was, unfortunately,  shared by some doctors.  Worse, those male medical professionals amplified such nonsense with "scientific studies" claiming that cycling also made women infertile. 

(Ironically, every fifteen years or so some doctor or another claims that cycling causes infertility in men.  Hmm...I guess all of those Tour de France winners who had children are the exception.)

Anyway, those fears were not expressed during the second bike boom and modern feminist movement--which, like their earlier counterparts, coincided.  The difference is, of course, that Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem and the other "Women's Libbers" of the 1970's did not see the bicycle as a vehicle for female independence.  In fact, they seemed not to think about bicycles at all:  I don't recall them mentioning pedaled two-wheeled vehicles in any way.  

Perhaps one could argue that the bicycle had already done its job in liberating women.  But there was another striking paralell between the two convergences of feminism and cycling:  At the beginning of each, racing and long-distance cycling were almost entirely male preserves. If anything, more than a few women, especially the young, were discouraged from becoming serious cyclists for that very reason.  Rather than predict the moral decay that would ensue from women mounting steel steeds, many male cyclists instead made--sometimes unwittingly--rides and clubs less than hospitable to women.

These days, I see a lot more women on bikes than I did in my youth or even just a few years ago. In yet another interesting reflection of an earlier time, many of the women I see on bikes are riding independently, or with other women.  In other words, they're not trying to become members of a "boy's club": Instead, we are making ourselves more independent, like the women of whom Ms. Anthony spoke more than a century ago.
 

  

Some Of My Old Commuter/Beater Bikes

I am both delighted and amused that Bike Boom-era ten-speeds are en vogue, at least with certain (mostly young and urban) segments of the population. 

Go to Bushwick, Brooklyn or any other enclave of the young and self-consciously hip (and bohemian poor) and you’ll find flocks of vinage Fujis, packs of old Peugeots, ranks of stalwart Raleighs and gaggles of Gitanes and other classic names promenading through plazas or chained to railings.

One reason is, of course, that such bikes are—as long as they haven’t been crashed, submerged in a deluge or otherwise abused—as good now as they were then.  While nobody would try to race those bikes, most of which had mild steel frames and cottered cranks, they offer rides that are reasonably quick yet comfortable.  The frames geometry, while maligned by racers and other performance-oriented riders, make the bikes versatile in ways that few contemporary bikes are.  That is the reason why so many have been converted to single- and fixed-gear urban cruisers.

What that means, of course, is that such bikes sell—especially in New York and other urban areas—for far more than they did a few years ago.  Even so, it’s often less expensive to buy such a bike, convert it and add racks, baskets or whatever else one likes, than it is to buy a new “urban” or “Dutch” (really, some marketer’s idea of “Dutch”) bike.

However, I can recall a time when Bike-Boom era ten-speeds could be had for a song, or even less.  As I recall, that time commenced around the mid-‘80’s, when mountain bikes became the machines of choice for the few (at least here in the US) bicycle commuters and “ride around the park every other Sunday” cyclists of the time.  Most people who bought ten-speeds in the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s rode them only for a short time before relegating them to garages, basements, barns and other “out of sight, out of mind” sites.  Eventually, they’d be sold in garage or estate sales, or even given away.  Some people used them in trade-ins for mountain (or, later, hybrid) bikes, so old ten-speeds could be had for very little money even from bike shops.  

For years—about a decade and a half, in fact—I used such bikes for commuters and “beaters”.  When I could, I rode them “as is”—of course, after inflating the tires, lubing the chains and such.  Usually, I changed the saddle and one or two other parts, and added a rear rack and fenders if the bike didn’t already have them.  As parts (usually wheels) broke down or wore out, I replaced them, sometimes with parts I had on hand or friendly shops allowed me to scavenge.  My ability to build wheels came in handy, as I could get discontinued models of rims cheaply and re-use the hubs that came with the bike, or get inexpensive replacements.

From the mid-‘80’s to the mid-‘90’s, bike theft was (I believe) even more rampant than it is now.  That was a further incentive to use such bikes, as losing one wasn’t as much of a financial (or emotional) blow as losing one of my better bikes would have been.  On average, I would say that I would ride one of those bikes about a year before losing it to a thief.

None of my photographs included any with any of those bikes in it.  However, I can recall, fairly accurately, each of those bikes and when I rode it.  I will list them below:  The year or decade in parentheses is the time, as best as I could determine, the bike was manufactured.  The year(s) on the right side indicate when I used the bikes.

Follis Tour de France (1960’s).  1985-87.  Stolen.

Raleigh Record (1960’s or early 1970’s). 1987-89. Stolen.

Jeunet (1960’s or early 1970’s). 1989-90. Crashed.

Peugeot U-09 (1978).  1990.  Stolen.

Motobecane Mirage (1960’s-early 1970's).  1990-92. Crashed.

Windsor (model unknown, 1970’s). 1995-97.  Loaned it to someone who later bought it.

Atala (model unknown, 1960’s). 1997-2001. Cracked after landing from a jump.

Motobecane Nobly (1970’s). 2001-2002. Was too big; sold it.