What If?: SunTour "Click Shift" And Freehubs?

Captain Ahab had Moby Dick.  Others have spent years, decades, even lifetimes hunting down one obsession or another.

Now, the "target" I'm about to discuss didn't do anything to harm me.  In fact, other products made by the company that manufactured my Loch Ness monster, or whatever you want to call it, have actually brought me pleasure, at least while cycling.

The company in question is SunTour.  For a time, I didn't want to use derailleurs or freewheels made by any other company.  And I once dreamed of building a track bike from Superbe Pro components, which I thought were even better (or at least more beautiful) than even Campagnolo's fixed-gear offerings.

The object of my obsession are really objects, plural.  They are parts of a system SunTour introduced in 1969 and, apparently, manufactured only during that year.  I have seen references to them in a number of sources, but have never seen the parts in person.  In fact, I had never seen images of them--until yesterday.

Well, I came across one component, anyway, on--where else!--eBay:

These "click shift" levers were part of an indexed shifting system SunTour made that year.  From the accounts I've read, it worked well, though it didn't sell well and no manufacturer outfitted a new bike with it as original equipment.  Although SunTour had patented its slant-pantogram derailleur five years earlier, it did not begin to export its wares until the year before the "click shift" system came out.

Interestingly, SunTour also introduced an hub with an integrated freewheel mechanism--much like today's cassette freehubs--in that same year.  It, too, worked well and,like other SunTour products, was well-made.  Like the click-shift system, it seems not to have been produced after 1969.

The simple explanation for the "freehub"s or "click shift"s lack of commercial success is that the market wasn't ready to depart from traditional screw-on freewheels or friction shifters.  But another reason why those items didn't make much headway is that they predated the '70's North American Bike Boom by a couple of years.  As Frank Berto has pointed out in "Sunset for SunTour," Shimano entered the American market in the late 1960s when low-priced American bikes like  AMF, Huffy and Murray (which were sold mainly in department stores) were outfitted with Lark and Eagle derailleurs.   On the other hand, Sun Tour derailleurs had to wait a few more years,  until Japanese bicycle manufacturers like Fuji, Bridgestone and Miyata--adorned with SunTour components--developed an export market in the US and, later, in other countries.  By the time those bikes, and lightweight bicycles in general, caught on with American adults, "Click shift" and the intergrated hub were several years out of production.

Ironically, Shimano's appropriation of those innovations--and SunTour's slant parallelogram design (for which the patent expired in 1984)-- would lead to SunTour's demise a decade later.  SunTour, in desperation, tried to develop competing systems.  But the indexed systems SunTour introduced in 1986 did not work as well as Shimano's and, worse, companies like Schwinn used their old stocks of freewheels, chains and cables, which didn't work very well with SunTour's indexed systems.

One can only wonder how things might be different had all of those Fujis, Miyatas, Nishikis, Panasonics, Centurions and other Japanese bikes  had been equipped with SunTour's "Click Shift" and integrated hubs.  Or, for that matter,what about those Schwinns, Raleighs, Motobecanes and other bikes that, a few years later, would be sold in the US with SunTour derailleurs and freewheels as original equipment.  What if they had "click shift" and integrated hubs?  Would those parts have become the de facto standards?   Would SunTour have come to dominate the components market the way Shimano has for the past three decades?  

(At the time Shimano introduced its SIS and freehub systems, the company was an afterthought in all but the lower price ranges, and their stuff was rarely, if ever, bought as replacement equipment, let alone after-market upgrades.)

Finally, I have to wonder what "retro" and "L'eroica" would mean today. After all, they are both defined, at least in part, by non-indexed shifting systems and screw-on freewheels.  Would the concepts of "retro" and "L'eroica" even exist?

Well, I know one thing:  I wouldn't have this obsession over parts SunTour made for only one year, in 1969.

It Made Our Bikes Possible

We have all had our life-changing moments, for better and worse: the first kiss, finding out that a hero or role model was merely mortal, tasting an unfamiliar food and liking (or disliking) it more than we expected, or doubting something that had always been believed or assumed.

I'm not going to tell you that I've had such a life-changing moment today, or within the past week or month.  But I got to thinking about those revelations or epiphanies or whatever you want to call them in our cycling lives.

Some of us experience such a moment upon riding a bike with dropped bars or a hard leather saddle and discovering it is actually comfortable--or, at least, not as uncomfortable as we expected.  Or it can come when we try a new genre of riding or type of bike:  For example, I never expected to fall in love with fixed-gear riding.  Conversely, some of us might learn that we do not have the time, resources or talent to become the racers we hoped to be--or that age or other changes in our bodies might mandate changes in the way we ride.

And then there are the seemingly-smaller, but nonetheless influential experiences that cause us to see some aspect of our cycling in a different way.

If you came of age during the 1970's (as a cyclist, anyway), one such experience could have come after you'd spent some time riding a typical bike from that era, which came equipped with Huret or Simplex derailleur--or the Campagnolo Valentino or Gran Turismo. Perhaps the derailleur broke, wore out or rusted solid (a common occurrence with Huret derailleurs in rainy climates).  Or you got to ride a friend's bike, or test-ride one in a shop.

Your friend's bike, or the one you test-rode, might have been equipped with the same derailleur your shop mechanic installed (or recommended, if you did your own work) when your Simplex, Huret or Campy died.  That derailleur was the Sun Tour GT--or, later, the VGT.

Sun Tour V-T Luxe Derailleur, ca. 1974.  From Disraeli Gears

To this day, I don't think I've ever ridden any other bike part that seemed so far superior to its counterparts.  Some people have described feeling that way about using an Apple computer after years of working on machines equipped with Microsoft.  Since I haven't used Apple, I can't vouch for its superiority.  However, I can assure you that the difference between Sun Tour derailleurs and anything else made during the 1970's was at least as great.

From what I understand, Apple is influencing changes in the design of other computers and electronic devices and that, in the near future, I might be using something with their imprint whether or not it's my intention.  

In a similar fashion, even though SunTour went out of business around 1995 (though its name is still licensed for bike parts marketed in Europe and other parts of the world), nearly all of us are riding a SunTour derailleur, if you will.  If you're riding any derailleur that clicks when you shift it, the mechanism will have a geometry very similar to, if not exactly the same as, a SunTour V-series (V, VT, V-GT, Vx, Vx-GT) from the 1970's.  Yes, even arch-rival Shimano adopted it for all but its least expensive rear derailleurs.  

In fact, Shimano's first SIS series of integrated derailleurs, shifters, cogs and chains came out in 1985--the year after SunTour's 1964 patent on the slant-parallelogram derailleur expired.  Shimano had made earlier, unsuccessful attempts at creating an indexed ("click-shift") derailleur system.  Turns out, they needed Sun Tour's slant parallelogram to make it work.

Ironically, when SunTour made its own indexed system a couple of years later, it didn't work as well as Shimano's.  The same was true of Campagnolo's first attempt at such a system:  the Synchro, which some of us called the "Stinkro".  SunTour and Campy both made the same mistake:  They simply retro-fitted an indexed ring to shifters they already made and didn't integrate it with the other parts.   

Campagnolo survived its mistake only because its more traditional Record (the Nuovo, Super and C- series) were still widely used in elite pelotons such as those of le Tour, il Giro and la Vuelta.  As good as SunTour's earlier equipment was, it was still almost unknown in those circles and, costing much less than Campy's stuff, didn't have snob appeal.  

People who started riding during the mid-90's or later have probably never heard of SunTour. But that once-proud derailleur maker made the bikes most of them ride possible--and changed our cycling world.