repechage

Oooo, a Jim Holly bike.

The Golden Boy 

I like the Suntour stuff.

pcb 

Skip over on ibob clued me in to this thread. Most of the Suntour pre-index stuff was from my bike shop days, when I wasn't paying much attention to installation instructions (and to be fair, you kinda didn't have to back then), plus the memory fades. And without a doubt, clean/square casing cuts, ferrules and tight socket fits are more critical when indexing is involved. Compressionless casing didn't exist pre-index, either, so there were fewer problems with wires poking out of the casing ends.

That said, the high-end Suntour rear ders (Cyclone, Superbe) didn't have cable tension adjusters, nor did your standard downtube shifters, so having a tight cable run with no slack caused by casing rocking in the rder socket meant better shifting. IIRC, the stainless casing chunk included with rders were 4mm w/ferrules at both ends. That casing was kinda springy, though.

In the shop we usually squared casing cuts on a bench grinder. I'd bevel the ends a little for the rounded-bottom sockets. Generally didn't use ferrules for brakes.

I can remember, though, seeing rounded-end ferrules, likely for brakes.

I always thought the casing sockets in the Spb brake lever bodies were too shallow. But they worked...

Somebody mentioned the Symmetric shifters, which was a cool idea and did what it was supposed to do. I always had a problem with the left/front lever loosening and ghost shifting, though, and since it didn't have d-ring tenstion bolts, I always rode with a 4mm hex wrench in my jersey pocket so I could tighten the lever on the fly. Might have been a bigger problem if you were shifting a triple front? When I later (good-naturedly) *****ed about this to Suntour engineers, they kinda shrugged and acknowledged it was a problem they never resolved. Also, top-of-downtube aero levers fell out of favor, and that was the only way to make the self trimming feature work.

Drillium Dude 

Found this Sugino Mighty crankset today and snagged it for the build:



I was originally looking for Suntour Superbe, but nothing in really good condition came up that wasn't (IMHO) crazy-priced. I decided to look for Sugino and found a few of the clunkier early cranksets before stumbling upon this Superbe look-alike. Condition is super and the arms have flutes on the backside, too. I will add beveling to the drillium and really make the rings pop. Oh, and I really like that S under the crown logo

I wonder what kind of seatpost I should look for? I'm going for a certain look, don't quite know exactly what it is, so I still have no idea what to do about a post...

DD

Drillium Dude 

Btw, the cranks are marked M-14, which I was 99.9% sure meant French thread (right?), so I am also looking for a different kind of pedal than my typical Campy because I don't currently have a French threaded pair. There are some good options out there.

DD

merziac

Excellent!

The "Mighty" Sugino Super/Mighty Competition, my true favorite, every bit as strong, tough, great looking and easily one of if not the best in the business imo.

My first top of the line crank that came on my first good bike and it was bullit proof for 30 yrs until it was stolen with the Raleigh SC it was on.

I had allowed the BB to get washed out before I realized the factory skimped on grease and it took a beating before I got it overhauled, good grease and light preload, regular often revisits kept it going just fine from then on. An amazing piece of manufacture and engineering for me.

smontanaro 

They don't seem to come up very often. Not sure where I got mine. In any case, it's just a badge engineered Sugino anyway, so you can rest easy.

Which reminds me of the other Campy part on my Griffon, the Bob Freeman-enhanced two-bolt Record seatpost. He takes a seatpost in bad condition, cuts off the scraped up section, turns down the remnant, then epoxies on a hunk of titanium tubing. 27.2 is the only option.

Drillium Dude 

I was surprised to see such a large casing socket on the Cyclone RD. A ferrule I had in my smalls fits it perfectly, and I ran one of those Campy stainless housings with little ferrules on each end into it. Perfect fit! I do notice that I had to unscrew the cage adjustment screw almost all the way out to get the derailleur to line up with the smallest cog, however, I don't anticipate any problems once I get it tweaked correctly.

I am waiting until my new(old) camera gets here so I can take some representative photos.

DD

merziac

Or you could do this.

A bit crude but works just fine when done with anti-seize, the axle mounted in a vice and a one step forward, two steps back process. I run them in from the back side too.

Drillium Dude 

I thought it might be - I prefer that cool Sea-Monkey crown logo on the Sugino, and I like the simpler flutes. The Superbes had those funny bi-level flutes.

A local riding buddy of mine has one of Bob's titanium Campy specials. Did yours come out lighter than original? I ask because my buddy claims his is heavier than before, but probably because he had the post built quite long (he rides a 65cm frame). I could do something like that I suppose, but I am trying to take this one bike away from Campy, so...

DD

Drillium Dude 

Re-tapping would be the way to go, huh? But I don't trust myself to get it right, and don't know anyone local who might give it a go for a reasonable price. Heck, I don't even know what a reasonable price to re-tap them would be. But since I'm trying to turn this into a Frankenbike of sorts, this is the perfect opportunity to add some Frenchiness

I'm looking at some old Atom 700s currently.

DD

Drillium Dude 

The issue was whether the braking system did/didn't need ferrules at both ends of the housing to function properly/as intended.

Your description above for the derailleur will most likely be my experience as well as I found a perfectly-sized ferrule for the RD, too.

DD

crank_addict

There were at least a dozen different makers in the same design as Campagnolo's two bolt Record seatpost. Possibly Campy copied them. Not only from other Italian makes but from France, Japan, Spain.

Is a Japan version of the Record seat post of interest?

smontanaro 

Dunno. Never bothered to weigh anything. (I generally don't.)

As for other options, I'm sure if you find a beat up non-Campy post, your frame takes a 27.2 post you and wanted to pay the piper, you could send it to Bob (assuming he still has some tubing). Lotta ifs there...

dddd

I concur with your observing the almost-wild distortion (and net compression) along any curve in a plain-stainless housing.
And the wild amount of friction that results when modern stainless cable wire is used in such housings!

Ahh, the rounded-end ferrules, found in the Dia-Compe-produced early aero levers. I would often find that these would swivel sufficiently to have the cable wire eventually cut a notch in these ferrules, with friction-plagued brake actuation the whole time! The later such levers featured a fixed-position ferrule inside, which forced all of the cable's exiting path curvature to occur inside of the lined housing for a much smother braking feel with no metal-to-metal contact at all.

I also often wondered why old brake levers had such shallow sockets for the housing. But I only figured it out today after all of these years! It would seem that this prevents the sort of damage to the cable housing that so often results from the cable housing's impact with things, the sort of damage that I so often must nip off with a cutter in order to salvage a bike's original housings. The shallow socket allows the housing to pivot out of the socket, so that the housing doesn't get sharply bent, thus preventing the cable's path from being pinched shut. That's one more thing that was right about the old designs that I never had a clue about. Bikes back than were perhaps ahead of our time(?)!

merziac

There is not a huge difference imo at the start of the threads and I have never had a problem doing it, they start ok and once you get it going it goes fine. The rethreaders are key for me, regular taps are too sharp and don't guide themselves well. I have saved badly mangled ones many times. Recently I had a PX-10 that had 9/16's pedals forced in badly. It took stripping the pedals down to the axles then vise and vise grips to get them apart. Then you would be proud, got some French pedals from the co-op, stripped them down and made rethreaders, fixed the holes, put French axles in a pair of Campy SR pedals and now it will stay all French as it should on this.

I would be happy to send these to you.

79pmooney

My 1976 Fuji Pro (one year before Superbe) came with that crankset. 54-44, 175. A regular Mighty 42 lived on the bike most of the time. Won an SR 43 to add to the mix. That was simply a real, full-on race crankset. A joy worthy of any bike. (And I got looked down on for riding it!)

I worked in a Fuji shop summer of '77. The Pros were all Superbe. Gorgeous. I raced against a team outfitted with those bikes often. I would have turned green with envy except that my Sugino/SunTour/NItto/Grand Comp bike worked really well. I wasn't giving anything away.

Ben

Drillium Dude 

Whatever I go with will be a single-bolt version. I always found adjusting the two-bolt Record posts a PITA

DD

Drillium Dude 

Yeah, no - I've moved away from two-bolt posts and prefer the modern single-bolt versions. Right now the SR post will suffice, but I would like to change it out, too. But this bike will be evolutionary in nature (the Campy 3-bolt crankset will get some test mileage while I await French-threaded pedals for the Sugino Mighty crankset, for example) and serve as a test bed. I'm even looking into a long-cage Cyclone for this so I can extend the gearing and use it for some mountain road gravel grinding in the spring.

DD

Drillium Dude 

Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly, but this crank is already French threaded. If I were to re-thread them, I'd need rethreaders for 9/16ths. But I'm not looking to do that - at the very least, I wouldn't want to try for the first time on this set. They're much too nice!!

DD

BFisher

The Nitto S65 is a handsome single-bolt seatpost.

merziac

No, you're reading right, I have both now and one to the other has never been difficult, 9/16's is easy, lots of pedals to get spindles from and with your drillium expertise, drilling straight, keeping the right angle, It should be fairly straight forward. They have always started ok for me, the trick is to keep the rethreader straight when it "catches" and digs into the existing threads, this is where taps can get you into trouble if they take too much bite and veer wrong. The rethreaders can push material around to make the correct path, you have to be diligent for sure but it goes fine if you are and don't force it the wrong way.

I would also be happy to do it for you if you want to send them to me, it would be gratis for the greater good. You "Mighty" check with Bob, ROS or Dfrost as well.

One more footnote, if these were Campy, I wouldn't advocate this although I wouldn't hesitate for myself, that being said, I would preserve a Campy set for the same reason I rescued the Stronglight set above and made the Campy pedals match it, because, well, Campy.

French Sugino's are fine to correct imo, I have two sets that were cheap for being French and were fixed straight away.

repechage

Cranks probably from a Gitane.... Yes.
Campagnolo DID make French threaded pedals... You need ones marked D, G.
BTW Lyotard made some "Campagnolo" form factor pedals, no "flip" tooth but otherwise All Aluminum and the correct dimensions for cleated shoes.

Drillium Dude 

Thank you for that suggestion - I just found and snagged one from Ebay

DD

BFisher

Most welcome.

I think I want your camera to arrive way too much.