AustinFitz

Well it appears my Superbe Tech RD already bit the dust I was working on disassembling the bike last night and as I was moving the bike around I happened to kick the pedal back to change the position of the crank arm that was in my way, and suddenly the RD lost spring tension... I know most people would recommend swapping to something more reliable, but I'd like to try to fix it anyway. I guess my next job will be scouring the internet for any information I can find on repairing it.

3speedslow

Bum...mer! Hope you make it happen.

AustinFitz

Opened it up to find this return spring broken completely in two, and fractured in many other places... Anyone know if these are available anywhere, or know of any cheap and plentiful derailleurs with a similar type spring off the top of their heads?

9volt 

The Mountech is similar. They also break a lot so it may be relatively easy to find one to scavenge for parts.

Piff 

It seems that these are likely to break in a multitude of ways...

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/Site/SunTour_Superbe_Tech_GTL_derailleur_5400.html

9volt 

Tonight I discovered one of my Mountechs may be dead. Different failure than yours so that return spring may be ok. Still need one?

AustinFitz

I sure do! I've been searching eBay for a cheap parts derailleur, but I'm pretty tight on cash right now, and haven't yet found one for a decent price.

9volt 

Here's the inside of the Mountech. The spring looks similar. PM if you'd like some or all of it.

AustinFitz

Success!!! Thanks to @9volt sending me a replacement spring from his Mountech, the original Superbe Tech is back in full working order!

It still needs to be cleaned, de-rusted, and polished along with the rest of the bike, but I didn't want to go any further with it until I knew for sure I could get it working again.

3speedslow

Wow, are those spokes that rusty?

Glad you were able to make the DR happen!

AustinFitz

Yeah, unfortunately the spokes are indeed THAT rusty lol. That's probably the worst part of the whole bike. No hope in cleaning them up. They'll have to be replaced for sure!

9volt 

Awesome! Glad it worked and it's good to know those parts are compatible.

noglider 

Take that derailleur apart every year and lubricate the spring so it doesn't rust and break.

AustinFitz

That's a good idea. I made sure to clean out all of the old grease and dirt from the housing and spring with some alcohol, then slathered everything with a coat of fresh marine grease before reassembling.

noglider 

That's another good idea.

The Golden Boy 

Now, I'm about as much of a Suntour fanboy as there is... but "one of my Mountechs..."

I'm just shocked anyone would use these on a bike they'd actually ride. There's just dozens of outrageously cool derailleurs out there to dick with one that has propensities for blowing up in more ways than one.

9volt 

They mainly live on projects or in the parts bin. This spring was from a wonky Mountech that came with a Trek 830 that I started working on recently.

AustinFitz

Well I guess I like to live dangerously, but I run a Mountech RD on my most ridden bike! I've been using it for about a year now with no problems whatsoever. I don't really ride it in the rain or off-road though, so it stays pretty clean.

I think a lot of the Mountech's bad rep comes from the fact that it was marketed as a MTB derailleur, and dirt seems to be the main cause of failure... They may not have seen so many failure claims had it been marketed as more of a road touring derailleur.

I may upgrade mine in the future, but for now it doesn't bother me. It's funny to see people react to it like I'm riding with an atom bomb strapped to my bike

The Golden Boy 

Oh, I like the little gizmo-y things... but that stops when it comes to my derailleur deciding to throw itself into the spokes through no fault of my own, when it's 5, 10, 20, 150 or however many miles from home.

I've thrown a derailleur into my spokes through faults of my own... I ONLY had to walk only a mile home carrying the rear end of the bike, and that sucked. Plenty of time for me to rationalize my poor decision making...



I think Suntour tried to get way too cute with it. You want a Suntour triple pivot that won't blow up on you? Try LeTech. Or better yet, a 2nd generation Mountech with the 13T pulley instead of the enclosed blowey-uppy-pulley. Just as cool, probably more rare and that bigazz pulley is pretty cool.





But even WAYYYYY BETTER- a Cyclone MII GT or an XC Comp or XC Pro... no useless 3rd pivot and a well proven record of reliability, rugged good looks and badassery... sounds like I'm talking about a lumberjack or something...





But for unique and badass and working well... Any of the Suntour triple pulley derailleurs are fantastic.





You may notice most of these derailleurs are on one bike- I've swapped out the derailleur on my 720 bunches of times, I've used XTR, XT, Duopar, Cyclone, Cyclone MII, XC Pro, XC Comp, LeTech, XC, and now Dura Ace on this bike. Maybe I'm even missing a few.

If I wasn't going with a 10 speed indexing system, I would have probably kept the triple pulley Suntour XC on there. It shifted as nicely as anything- I would say it was a tie between the Duopar and the XC triple pulley- and the triple pulley never hosed on me like the Duopar did. I did up the lower 2 pulleys with red Bullseyes and the jockey pulley as a "titanium" colored Bullseye- that was badass.

My Stumpjumper came to me with an M735 XT RD and an LX/Weinmann rear wheel, and the stock front wheel. The stock RD would have been an 1st gen Mountech. It doesn't take much to tell me that RD blew up sometime in the early 90s and the whole rear wheel needed to be replaced. The original owner of that bike told me that was his commuter. It wasn't a dirt bike, that was his "ride over the Golden Gate Bridge on his way to work 5 days a week" bike.

Yeah it's cute to have a death defying derailleur on there. Yeah, it's cute to say you taunt fate instead of tempting it. While the bike is a whole lot for lookin' good, it's more for riding. But you're not riding and you're not looking good with your RD tucked into your spokes and cussing out words sailors don't even know.

AustinFitz

I'm well aware of the potential dangers of using the Mountech, and familiar with all of the better performing, mouth watering alternatives from SunTour. As I said, I'll probably upgrade it in the future. "I like to live dangerously" was a joke... I'm not using the Mountech to be "cute" or dangerous. It was simply the derailleur that came on the bike, and since it seemed to be fully functioning changing it out wasn't the first thing on my to-do list... I would absolutely LOVE to swap it out with a LeTech, second gen Mountech, or any of the 3 pulley versions!!! I'm also a big fan of the Cyclones and all of the GT series!

I'll eventually get around to finding one of those, but at the moment money is too tight for me to be shopping for derailleurs any time soon

The Golden Boy 

Dig.

There's so much fun in playing with different derailleurs- I *do* do it to be cute. Or at least playful with it. I do think the oddball stuff is cool- ESPECIALLY when it works great. I love nifty, pretty and/or rare parts- but not at the expense of really harming performance or reliability.

Hearing the "plunk" of the derailleur cage going into the spokes is something I hope you never have to hear.

Your DB is a really cool bike, and your Centurion is outrageously classy beautiful.

wschruba

Just so you know, I saw that you cleaned the derailleur with alcohol--alcohol is a polar solvent...and in the case of grease is almost exactly the wrong alignment. You'll have an easier time cleaning thoroughly (and not going crazy trying to remove every last bit) using odorless mineral spirits (the real VOC stuff). Any small amount that remains will slightly thin whatever lubricant you put in there.

Super heavy soil on parts can be dealt with with kerosene, but for obvious reasons, it shouldn't be used regularly when other chemicals suffice.

(Fun fact: diesel fuel/kerosene are the preferred cleaning solutions for internally geared hubs/coaster brakes, as the residue left in them doesn't need to be cleaned off before relubrication/reassembly.)

AustinFitz

Thank you! After re-reading my previous comment I want to apologize for coming off so defensively. Being such a big fan of SunTour I guess I have a hard time accepting that the Mountech could indeed be THAT bad lol. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that it's really not worth betting my original 40 spoke rear wheel on.

I'm still undecided on a replacement, but I do really enjoy the oddball stuff, so whatever it is will have to be at least somewhat different and interesting. It will almost certainly be SunTour though.

I've often thought about going with the LeTech since it's what would have come on the next model up from my Elite GT, but then I think if if going to swap the RD I might as well try to get away from the unnecessary 3 pivot design too while I'm at it. I've got plenty of time to think about it before I'll be able to afford buying anything though

AustinFitz

Thanks for the tip. I don't normally use alcohol when cleaning parts, and I didn't use it to clean that whole derailleur. Just used a couple of drops to clean off that one spring and housing because it was already on hand where I was in the kitchen at the time. Normally I go out to my shed and use mineral spirits.

I also made sure to set the parts out to dry for a while after doing that just to make sure any leftover alcohol had evaporated off. Everything was bone dry before I re-greased and assembled it.

The Golden Boy 

I'm the one who's coming across like a dick- and I've re-written each of those posts over again to try not to sound like a dick... and then I read it after I post and roll my eyes at myself.

So much most everything Suntour did was so cool. No shifting solution is as cool as Command Shifters. The quality of the XC Pro stuff is so much nicer than XT or XTR. I can't find my chain takeup pix I did when I fell in love with my XC 3 pulley- it's ridiculous how much chain that elbow takes up. But the "tech" RDs are solutions to problems that didn't exist. Complicated for the sake of being complicated.