Soody

It's often easier to spin at 5-10 km/h up a very steep gradient, especially offroad where you might slip pushing up the hill, or, on a tight mountain road, one with trucks, where walking a bike is hazardous.
Gearing can always be lower for a touring setup.

Soody

This is a fantastic bike.
To me it's setup as an excellent commuter, and if you're serious about touring on it, could have better performance.
For touring, i would prefer more powerful brake levers (any basic aero routing shimano ones are fine), $$ tires as wide as will fit, lose the fenders, and a cassette wheel with a 34, 36 or wider big cog.

The pink hoods, black tape, and handlebar mirrors combination is truely hideous. As are your plastic bottle cages.

hopperja

Thanks!

hopperja

Rode the Foothills Trail today. 31 miles, 2 hours. This was near Buckley, WA. That's a Vincita trunk bag I got for my Brompton. I really like it for day rides on the Expedition too.

hopperja

I watched a video on YT about servicing the rear derailleur where the person commented that the upper jockey wheel is the Achilles heel of this particular design. What's the consensus on this derailleur? I have no experience with a Suntour Mountech other than on this bike. Is it reliable enough to keep in service, or replace it?

I have a ~1990 Deore LX long cage I could replace it with.

Calsun

I would not buy a bike without the combo brake/shift levers for general riding much less for touring with a load. Since buying my first bike with this feature I quickly found I was shifting more often and being in the optimum gear for a given situation. Much easier to maintain my cadence and speed, especially in hilly terrain.

The 1980's triathalon bikes were very good for touring with their relaxed geometry. I owned the Centurion Dave Scott bike and it was very stable even at speed. Current triathalon bikes are not as good but fortunately "endurance" bikes are available with a similar geometry with the Specialized Roubaix bike being a good example.

The Golden Boy 

The original Mountech with the captive pulley is a terrible design. It actually is a major contributing factor to the downfall of Suntour. No kidding.

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site...of_duopar.html

There are a few different versions of the Mountech- none of which are particularly "good." The Mountech front derailleur is one of the very best front derailleurs ever made; the first version of the Mountech rear derailleur with the captive pulley is one of the very worst rear derailleurs ever made. As for why it's so bad, the primary thing is that it's difficult to access and maintain the upper pulley and then it gets fouled and it seizes and it throws the derailleur into the spokes. Additionally, the Mountech not only has 3 pivots- each of which can wear or go out of adjustment- but the cage is really long- meaning it doesn't take much to damage it- a smaller hit on the cage has more leverage to bend or push the pivots (or any part) out of alignment.

I have a 1984 Stumpjumper Sport- The original owner used it as a commuter, not so much an off road bike. It's interesting because everything- except the pedals and the grips was stock on the bike- but the rear derailleur and rear wheel were replaced with units from around 1993. It's that real-life example of what happens- the derailleur seizes and gets thrown into the spokes, tearing up the derailleur, wheel and possibly dropout.

There's things that have bad reputations that you can just be obstinate about and just use. It seems there's people that use their Mountechs in the face of every bit of historical probability that it'll happen... and even people that it happens to that go out of their way to repair the obscenely complicated pulley system. IMO- there's HUNDREDS of really cool, bulletproof, ultra reliable derailleurs that would be "right" on that bike- there's zero reason to keep that Mountech on there.

The circa 1990 LX unit would be fine- Personally I'd look for a circa 1985 Suntour XC (just plain "XC" all silver with black screening on)- IMO- that's the most modern of the friction Suntour derailleurs. Triple pulley XC would be bonus points

abdon 

Mountech was not all that terrible (only somewhat terrible). The biggest issue was that it did not like to crunch gravel. On a dirt bike grinding dirt day in and day out it was not a happy camper and was prone not to live a long fruitful life. What made it only somewhat terrible was the fact that the overcomplicated mechanism could not be serviced with common tools.

having said that I have no issues running them on touring bikes that are not grinding gravel on a daily basis. On that environment they are quite reliable and with plenty of chain capacity.

hopperja

Thanks for the info on the Mountech. The link provided by The Golden Boy was a very interesting read. I had no idea. The video on the maintenance was very critical, which is why I asked the question to begin with.

This bike is new to me, I really like it, and have dreams of long rides for years to come. I took it off and installed the Deore LX (RD 550, made 1990-1992). I fiddled a little with the Mountech and found the upper pulley mostly smooth, but caught a little at one point while rotating it, which means it definitely needed some love. For now, I'll run the LX.

And for Merziac, nearly every day I search CL for a Merz. I don't expect one will come up any time soon.

hopperja

abdon 

Basic derailleur maintenance should not require much at all. The alluded complexity comes from the delicate (for dirt biking) spring mechanism that if it got cruded and broke you could not easily get to it. Take out the wheels, clean and lube, and you should be good to go.

I have that derailleur in two bikes, I don't worry about them failing.

merziac

Well I just saw this, you have to tag or quote someone for them to get an alert. May have missed it but even if you are in PDX, Merz's don't show up often and don't last very long.

Finding one your size and getting your hands on it are very challenging.

And you do already have a very Merz DNA adjacent bike to hold you over.

Your CL search needs to be nationwide, efbay also and you need to be ready and able to pounce without any hesitation.

hopperja

Started a new job and haven't been able to ride much. Got out today though.

polymorphself 

…but most people touring aren’t doing so after long swims and also need to carry 40+ lbs of gear. No doubt those were stable bikes, but loaded with gear over many miles and up hills? Seems like they’d fall short in a lot of ways compared to an Expedition, 720, Voyageur etc.

abdon 

They would work somewhat fine for light touring and credit card touring. True workhorses (This Expedition, Miyata 1000/Specialissima, Trek 720) are built so the frame is dialed to perform under a heavy load.

Heck the Specialized Sequoia and Expedition bikes; both built the same year, both are designed for touring, and yet the Sequoia was built with their "Special Series Racing double butted" (same as the ones used in their regular road bikes) and the Expedition uses "Special Series Touring double butted". I don't know what secret sauce is on their tubbing (they didn't make it, they just rebranded it for marketing purposes) but the touring version is just built for heavy loaded touring and perform at its best when you are packing a lot of weight.

merziac

Some of their tubing was reported to be specced by and for them, aside from that, Neenan, Merz, DiNucci, Bainbridge, Sinyard, R+D, production, ethos and plenty else.

Innovate or die evokes a lot of passion and talent from those that already have it in spades.

hopperja

I took 2 - 5 gallon buckets of glass to the recycle center (no curbside pickup where I am). I managed to turn it into a 22 mile ride, which was nice.

About the rear derailleur : on my last ride, I had a catastrophic failure of the old LX, so I replaced it with another I had laying around. Here's a picture on the way back:

montclairbobbyb 

Thanks for that golden tidbit (no pun intended)... I've long been scratching my head to understand the rationale for this, but now it makes perfect sense... That said, I too swapped out my middle chainring to add a more "middle" range up front, and I still am running a 5-speed freewheel.

hopperja

I just re-read this. Very interesting. I knew the name "half-step and a granny" but didn't know the reasoning behind it. So, to use it as it was conceived, you'd be shifting the FD as often as the RD, to take advantage of each half step. It seems to me this would work better in theory than practice.

merziac

Lucky lad, glad the rest went unscathed.

The Golden Boy 

Exactly-

Start- shift to big ring, shift to small ring and up one in back. Shift to big ring. Shift to middle and one in back. Shift to big ring.

Theoretically- There’s gear charts with ring and gear progressions/patterns mapped out. Again- that’s way too much thinking for me.

Piff 

I agree, too much thinking and finessing for a triple.

But! I want to try on a 126mm 7 speed freehub with a '9 of 10 on 7' cassette setup. I think it would be dead simple and actually pretty nice to use. Since there's only two places for the front derailleur to be you can slam it up or down w/o much thought. And then since the spacing is only 126mm cross chaining is kept to a minimum while gaining access to 9 cogs.

Another sweet benefit to this setup would be that you could probably use 144 BCD cranks (which seem to often have the best designs from the old days) and still have a wide range with even, small steps between.

JustAnEngineer

There is one available on ebay right now (not mine); it has been relisted close to a dozen times (original asking price was over $1,000, now down to $625 OBO + $175 shipping).

My Bike Forums account doesn't have enough posts yet to allow outside URL links, but if you search for "Specialized Expedition Touring Bike, 54cm-Vintage" you should be able to find it. Located in Lyme, New Hampshire.

Garthr

I had the Mountech as stock on my '83 Stumpjumper Sport and it ended up failing fairly quickly as I recall. All I remember really is going to a shop for a replacement, a Shimano Sport LX rear. It's kind of an oddball, just made a few years as I recall. I'm pretty sure it's not related to Deore LX at all. Neverthless, it's been flawless and I still ride it today on my road bike as I sold the Stumpie frame long ago.

Half Step gearing doesn't require one to keep shifting from ring to ring for every cog chain in a certain pattern. I ran a 26/44/48 and a 7sp 13-32 FW. I would ride either ring and rear shift most of the time, only changing rings as I needed or desired as a fine tuning. It was no different than that way than a say 26/36/46, it's just the 2 big rings were closer together, offering more fine tuning of the gear. I never thought I had to follow some mathematical pattern. Ride and shift as needed, not complicated ! I still ride the same Sachs 13-32 FW's today, 13/15/17/20/24/28/32 and those lend themselves to nice tweener gears. I think the only reason why I didn't continue with it was I wore out the 44t and changed the crank and it came with 26/36/46 rings. For a yet to adorn new classic steel frame I just may go to HS+G again. If you have to ask why, you miss the point, why do anything ? For the joy of it The specifics themselves are only the means to the expression of it.

hopperja

Rode to the hardware and grocery stores today. 38°f and raining.

Had a flat on the way home. Broke out the spare tube and Tiakia pump I got for less than $20 on Amazon. It worked surprisingly well. The pumping motion is a little like a shake weight. When my right hand got tired, I switched to my left. Practice makes perfect!

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