trawson

I hope I'm In the right forum, I'm not sure if this goes here or in Classic (could my bike really be a classic??). I have what I guess counts as at least an older bike, a Fuji Del Rey 12-speed road bike from the late 1980s. Generally everything about it is in pretty decent shape, needs a little work but it rides fine. It's my only bike and I use it fairly regularly.

The problem I have is that the front shifter has died. The shifters and derailleurs are Suntour (I tried to attach photos but keep getting alerts and the upload stops at 50%, even when I reduce the size of the files to under 1 MB each). The front shifter just says "Suntour," the rear says shifters say "Suntour Accushift;" they are mounted on threaded fittings that are brazed to the downtube. The front derailleur is labeled as "Suntour 4050 Edge" and the rear as "Suntour Accushift 4050 Edge". The rear is indexed and works fine. However the front won't hold the chain on the larger chainring, it always slips back to the smaller no matter how tight the shifter is.

It's pretty clear I need new shifters, at least for the front, but I'm not sure where to find something that will work on the downtube. I don’t need anything fancy. I'm not particularly inclined to install brake handle shifters, the brakes work fine and that seems like a pretty substantial cost in time and $$. But I’m open to ideas. I’d also be perfectly happy with friction rather than indexed (actually I slightly prefer it), but I don't know if I can use a friction shifter on the rear derailleur or if the indexing is something that's matched between shifter and derailleur.

I am mechanically inclined and happy to make repairs myself. I haven't done very many on this bike but that’s because it really hasn't needed them.

Suggestions how to proceed? Thanks!

Tom

HillRider

Amazon sells a remarkably wide variety of downtube shifters. Almost any Shimano, SunRace or Microshift downtube shifter will work, particularly for front shifting which is always friction. Unfortunately, they only come in pairs so you can't get just a new front.

trawson

Thanks for the quick reply! I am not a fan of Amazon but use it when I have to . Are the brazed fittings all threaded the same or does one need to search for compatible threading?

70sSanO

You can probably find them on eBay. Suntour Accushift hasn’t been made in decades. The problem is that you can’t buy any brand of shifter for the rear because they have to match the rear derailleur, and in Suntour’s case maybe the freewheel.

The somewhat good news, for your issue, is that for the front, you can use any friction shifter, including older Suntour to sort of match.

When you need to replace the freewheel, although Suntour can almost last a lifetime, you can convert over to a Shimano compatible drivetrain. Bad news is that most of the 6/7 speed shifters and freewheels made these days are not made very well.

John

Edit added: Now you might be able to rebuild your front shifter since it is friction. I’m sure someone here has done that and it can’t be that tough.

dedhed

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...ompatible.html

70sSanO

Here are a couple of examples...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-Suntour...8AAOSwusdcKdMh

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-Suntour...ss!92691!US!-1

John

Another one... https://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-Suntour....c100005.m1851

dsbrantjr

You can use friction at the front or rear, many indexed shifters have a friction option.

Miele Man

Sometimes no. That's because some Suntour Accushift syestems used a freewheel with different cog spacing on the same freewheel whereas Shimano were equidistant between all cogs.

Cheers

Miele Man

When you say Front shifter are you talking about the left side shifter that controls the front derailleur? If so, what's wrong with it that you feel you need to replace it?

Cheers

dedhed

Probably just needs a new friction washer as he says it's not holding

Miele Man

Lots of them on Ebay. Lightly used ot New Old Stock (NOS).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Sun...4AAOSw9rJepgea

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Sun...wAAOSwhilZZFRU

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Suntour-Dow...AAAOSwZ4Rb7eUv

https://www.ebay.com/itm/USED-SunTou...QAAOSwpwVekJc9

and many more.

Cheers

trawson

So the problem was indeed that the front (left side) shifter was not holding. It would shift up to the large chainring but then jump back down after 2 - 20 seconds. After a little more reading I tried taking it apart, cleaning everything with mineral spirits, and putting it back together. Initially it seemed to do much better but that was only for a couple of moves from low to high, then it went back to its old behavior of letting go easily. If the friction washer is the spring washer that's three-dimensional rather than flat, it seemed fine from what I could see. My suspicion is that the ratchet mechanism that allows it to move easily in one direction and with more difficulty in the other is worn out (worn teeth on the ratchet wheel, pawl, or both) and no longer holds the shift lever in position.

Anyway, I went ahead and ordered one of the sets off of eBay and hopefully that will improve things.

Thanks for all the help!

JohnDThompson 

Not all lever bosses use the same fittings, but the fact that you have SunTour lever currently installed suggests yours are the most common type: square base, round post with two flats at the top, and 5mm x 0.8mm thread for the mounting bolt.