Smokinapankake

So I recently scored a really nice (not quite unridden) Bianchi Axis cyclocross bike from the local bike collective. I’m almost ashamed to tell you the price. I feel like I stole it.

Anyway, it came with all Suntour stuff but I’d like to see some catalog scans to verify what is and what isn’t OEM. I believe it to be 1990 model year as the serial number delineates January 1990 manufacture and all the date codes on the Suntour stuff is mid - late 1989. I think it is as original and unmolested as one could hope a 31 year old bike could be; I have no reason to believe anything was changed on it except the tires, but would like some confirmation from the experts out there.

I’m pleased as punch to have this bike and plan to put many many miles on it. I know it’s nothing real special but any survivor bike that has held on to its original parts for 31 years is kind of special.

On to the pics!



As found




Bent handlebar

Pedals included - Sakae Lo-Fat with Sakae branded toe clips and Sakae branded straps



SN AS046626 follows S(1) format


These pics are all as found, you’ll notice the handlebar has a wicked bend on the right side.

Smokinapankake

I didn’t document my overhaul, but I was amazed to see the hub races and bottom bracket races had zero wear. The bearings looked like the bike hadn’t been ridden, or if it had it got ridden from the shop to home and then hung in the garage. No markings whatsoever.

The handlebar had a wicked bend so it had to be replaced. I cut the original up so that it couldn’t be rebent and reused. So my collective coughed up a suitable replacement; an ITM anatomical bend something or other to the tune of $5. I also stumbled on some nice Suntour XCD cantilevers date coded early 1990 while I was there that I thought would look nicer than the Dia-Compe 986’s it had on it. Plus, they matched the rear derailleur so…

The Command Shifters were mounted with the cable exiting forward and downward so it took a bit of fiddling to get them figured out. They should mount with the cable exiting toward the bar, so they can be routed alongside the brake cables under the bar wrap. Once I got that bit sorted I started likens those shifters a lot better.

How about some more pics?



Just waiting on some new Celeste cork tape


Sakae SXC crank 170 mm; 28-38-48 “Roundtech” rings.

XCD brakes with matching Suntour branded pads that look an awful lot like Kool-Stop eagle claw pads

Nitto Dynamic II stem

Suntour GPX brake levers



Suntour GPX bottom bracket

Racing!

Smokinapankake

I didn’t like the poor brake cable routing at the front so my parts box yielded the perfect solution:



A V-brake cable noodle to eliminate that sharp bend in the housing!

Tange Levin CD headset still needs adjusted , and the bars need wrapped, but other than that it’s ready to go! I’m going to put some miles before I commit to wrapping; the reach seems a bit long to me so I may see what treasures my local collective might have in terms of a shorter stem. Or maybe I’ll just ride it!

So my questions for the cognoscenti are thus:
-Can anyone confirm the year as 1990?
-I have a Suntour catalog for 1992 that claims Command shifters are “new for ‘92!” If they didn’t exist before ‘92, and this is indeed a 1990, what shifters came as OEM?
-Below the serial number on the BB is another number: I9 or 19, on the drive side-

Oops - upside down.

What is this number and what does it mean?

-Any other information anyone can give is greatly appreciated! Thanks for your interest and indulging me. This will be my first real relationship with a drop bar road bike so I’m learning as I go.

Interesting to note that this bike was sold new from a local bike shop that closed down about 15 years ago (Miller’s Ski & Cycle Haus) which has been replaced by another bike shop: Skyline Cycles, in the old Miller’s shop!

T-Mar

The serial number indicates that the frame was manufactured in Japan during January, 1990, so it is indeed a 1990 model. This confirmed by the combination of graphics and colour. The former are 1990-1991 but the 1991 Axis was only offered in Mint Celeste and a Raspberry and Dove Grey fade colour scheme.

SunTour Command shift levers were available in 1990. Attached is a scan of the new Radius group from the 1990 catalogue, showing and mentioning the Command shift levers. In 1990, they were also offered with the GPX, Edge and Blaze road groups. The Command shift levers for all four groups have the exact same part numbers, so there appears to have been no variation between groups. Your brake levers appear to the GPX model, as they do not have the obround access hole at the top of the lever, as seen on Radius, Edge and Blaze.

bikemig 

These are neat bikes and you did a fine job on it. I'm not surprised that you found little wear on the cones. There are a lot of garage queens floating out there but it's always a good thing when one of those come your way.

Smokinapankake

Thanks for that scan, TMar, I knew the frame manufacture was Jan 1990, but was unsure about the shifters. My 1992 Suntour catalog shows them as new for 92 but I wonder if they meant 8 speed was new for 92...

15 mile ride today on it and I’m reminded why Suntour couldn’t compete and pulled out of the US market in 93 (I think 93 was the last year for them). Clunky, imprecise, high effort required, and fit and finish just not quite up to the standard Shimano set. Also I’m reminded why I don’t really like drop bars - fingers go numb no matter where my hands are on the bar. Maybe I’ll change it over to flat bars and throw on my Suntour XC Pro thumbies. That way I don’t have to lose the wheel set for some Shimano something or other. Although that could be a possibility...

At any rate, the ride is very nice like a decent steel frame should be, and I’m looking forward to more fiddling with this thing. Although I do carry a bit of discomfort with changing from OEM spec (Nevermind I changed the brakes - I still have the original Dia-Compe 986’s it came with, and I’ll probably put them back on soon). The handlebar was a necessity so it doesn’t count...

I rechecked the date codes on those XCD brakes - they were made Dec 1988, not early 1990 like I thought. So conceivably they could still have a home on that frame set....

merziac

@Smokinapankake

Great score.

Don't make any apologies for scoring a great deal, you were paying attention, right place at the right time, it's not rocket surgery, and you simply seized the day, as you should have.

Too bad about the lackluster performance of the group, still a pretty unique one and and probably engineered for a pricepoint above all. I've always liked Suntour for its independent stance and we all know plenty of their stuff easily held its own for a long time.

Might be worth paging @pcb to weigh in.

shelbyfv

Cool bike, great find.

Smokinapankake

I was a Suntour fan boi for many years, willingly turning a blind eye to their lackluster performance and increasing difficulty in finding replacement parts (think powerflo cassettes in 7 or 8 speed), citing their flexibility in mixing and matching compatibility between group sets and simplicity (thumbies vs. Rapidfire plus shifters) as an advantage over Shimano’s near monopolistic requirement that only Shimano work with Shimano. There was also a bit of adventure in being just that little bit different I guess... But by the mid 90’s I was reduced to only running XC Pro 8 speed thumb shifters on Shimano everything else. As I recall it took a narrower chain to maintain smooth shifting performance, and Shimano Hyperglide cassettes were a revelation. All the hype about fragile rapidfire plus shifters being delicate and complicated (especially on a mountain bike) was just that - hype, and after some initial teething problems, they proved to be sturdy and robust. So in about 97 I finally gave in and made the switch to all Shimano and haven’t regretted it one bit. I do miss my old XC Pro microdrive crankset with a 20 tooth granny gear, but that’s mostly just nostalgia talking now.

The new 9 and 10 speed MicroShift thumbshifters are super nice, and what I would have hoped XC Pro would have evolved into. But after lots of years on rapidfire shifters I’m completely over thumb shifter superiority complex.

So maybe this Axis will eventually receive a complete component swap, or maybe I’ll just change it over to flat bars and my old 7 speed XC Pro thumbies. Depends on if I can find a nice Shimano compatible wheel set at a decent price, I guess... These old bikes can be a process of evolution unless you’re a stickler for originality and fidelity to OEM spec. I kind of am and kind of am not.

More to come!

pcb 

Oy, don't get me started............

pcb 

Great bike, great score. The components, meh.

Beth Horner was spec'ing those Bianchis, this was not long before she left and Sky Yaeger started. Those Bianchi proto-gravel bikes were way ahead of their time, and Beth took a lot of crap from competitor product folks back then who didn't get it.

But using all that Suntour stuff didn't help. Bianchi and Cannondale were probably the two most "loyal" Suntour spec'ers. Poor shifting performance and consequent poor sales forced their hands, and Shimano took over.

Without getting too far into the weeds, and avoiding broken-record syndrome, I'll say that Suntour's "component compatibility" was mostly marketing spin to gloss over the fact that they really needed three different shifting geometries, which they either didn't recognize, because their "good enough" wasn't good enough, or couldn't afford to implement. I think it was a combination of both, and it failed them. And their "component flexibility" likewise exacerbated their shifting performance problems, and was a combination of sloppy product management ("Eh, WCC should be able to sub a different chain---should still work OK.") and weak market position---Suntour was desperate for spec so it was hard for them to push back against big customers looking to save a few yen with different/cheaper parts spec. Those spec'ing substitution decisions caused real damage. Shimano did play hardball with spec, and it's easy to make that seem villainous, but their stuff always worked well, and that's why Shimano succeeded and Suntour failed.

Interesting that the reality was Shimano's stuff was much less sensitive to subbed parts than Suntour's.

Also interesting that SRAM's winning an anti-trust suit against Shimano, who had tried to bully OE to only buy Shimano components, is what opened the door to SRAM really getting into the marketplace. Shimano did pay a price for playing excessively aggressive hardball.

And circling back to Suntour, a fax from SRAM to Suntour just around that time, saying their analysis showed they'd need three different shifting units to cover Suntour's "fully cross-compatible" product line, is what caused one of the Suntour product guys to look very confused, and say to me: "SRAM understands our products better than we do."

And though the Command Shifters have their fans today, they never sold well. And it wasn't unusual to find them installed incorrectly. And, yeah, the "New" in '92 likely was for new 8spd, since they'd been in the line for a couple years already. I don't know if there were other changes done to the levers, that was after my time, but I don't think Suntour had any money available for new molds, so I'd be surprised if there were any significant hardware changes.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Your noodle solution for the front brake is smart, but noodles always seemed to me to have a lot of inherent friction/drag. No something you'll necessarily feel, the short cable run and strong caliper springs usually neutralize/overcome the friction, but it bothers me nonetheless. I'll usually do the uglier solution of routing the cable/casing over the top of the stem, or if I'm not concerned with period-correctness, use a short chunk of Jagwire link housing, which is a little flexier so it doesn't mind tight curves, and it's a lot smoother than a noodle.

bOsscO

Too bad about the numbness. Did you have bar tape on or no? If not maybe bar tape will help. If so maybe thicker bar tape or a double wrap may help. I've never had hand issues on my road bike but on my drop bar gravel bike I like a little thicker tape.

T-Mar

I don't recall what kind of gear cable housing that Bianchi USA spec'd at the time. They may have been penny pinching. Pull the caps to see if it's lined, non-compression housing. If not, replacing it with some should improve the shifting.

Smokinapankake

PCB: Thanks for that information; that was quite enlightening! I graduated high school in 1990 and just 2 years earlier bought my first real mountain bike, a Peugeot Tundra Express. About $400 if I recall correctly. By 1990 I was dazzled by all things MTB and especially the high end stuff, and so I took the marketing hook line and sinker. But working in a shop as a mechanic starting in 1991 I indeed started to see Shimano as the evil mega corporation and Suntour as the noble little guy. However, by the time I left shop life in 1998 I was over it. Seeing very few broken shimano shifters, and the fact that they always worked and worked well cured me of my Suntour love affair.

As far as this bike goes I’m having a hard time with the notion of changing anything just because it is such a nice time capsule. The conflict comes from knowing if I don’t dump all the old componentry and convert to newer well performing hardware, the bike will just become (or continue its life as) a garage queen.

Ive got some bar wrap in hand (just came in today) so will give that a go before making more drastic changes.

Smokinapankake

T-Mar,

It is Suntour Powershift lined compressionless housing. The poor shifting comes from the fact that Suntour didn’t have HG cassettes and so the chain literally has to climb up above the teeth and drop down into them. I’ve been riding Hyperglide cassettes for so long now I’ve forgotten how to shift pre-HG, and in this day and age, why on earth would anyone want to anyway?
Not trying to be a smart a$$, just sayin is all. I do appreciate the input, and am still excited to have this bike!

Smokinapankake

Bossco, didn’t have any tape on as I’m still trying to figure out positioning. It seems like wherever my hands are, all my weight is concentrated in one little spot and so in short order things start tingling then going numb. I’ve got some new tape in hand, but I’m hesitant to wrap it up until I’m fairly confident it will work for me

T-Mar

No problem. I appreciate where you are coming from. HyperGlide was a game changer. In 1990, SunTour introduced AccuShift Plus in response to HyperGlide but it wasn't at the same level. SunTour couldn't compete with HyperGlide until they introduced Power-Flo a couple of year later but by that time it was too late.

pcb 

Bianchi was usually very good about using correct/approved spec, including cables/casing. Beth didn't spec much lower-end product, so she had less need to squeeze pennies, and was sharp enough to know that saving a few yen on cheaper parts subs wasn't the way to build a quality brand.

I think the Suntour indexing hangups were both not having HG-type tooth profiles and the lack of a floating upper/guide pulley. The HG part was the biggest contributor to effective indexing, but the floating guide pulley helped make the system more forgiving overall, less sensitive to minor misalignment, normal wear/tear, even minor mis-spec'ing. SIS had a very wide tolerance range. Shimano's success was not only that everything shifted great in the stand, when brand-new, but that bikes didn't come back for 100mi checks with poor shifting. Or, unlike Suntour, didn't come back _before_ the 100mi check with shifting problems.

pcb 

And on a couple of other things discussed...

I'm always a little torn now, at my advanced age, between how cool a fully period-correct machine looks and how, when I was coming up, the first thing a sharp mechanic would do was start tweaking/changing components. If you weren't checking out the little classified ads in the mags and finding cool/different stuff, you weren't putting your thumbprint on your bikes. So I understand anybody's reluctance to change vintage stuff, especially when the bike is as clean as your Axis, but I'm more about tweaking then maintaing fidelity.

There's also how my advanced age now makes so much of that vintage period-correct stuff not very fun for me to ride any more. It's a combination of what my body now tolerates, and what I've gotten used to over the past 40yrs. I no longer get along with 25mm tires, narrow 40cm drop bars or deep drops to the bars. I was never a big fan of all that back in the day, even, but my tolerance level for them has shrunk significantly. It's not hard to find vintage-looking/appropriate bars/stems that work for me, but the tire width thing sucks because it takes a lot of very cool frames out of contention for me. But I only buy stuff to ride, and if I know I'm not going to enjoy the ride, why buy?

So I'm always the guy who says change whatever your want to enjoy your ride more, and don't worry about what isn't stock any more.

As for your bars and numb hands, I'm in no way qualified to address any of that beyond personal experience. What works for me is getting my bar tops up to within an inch or two of the saddle, shallower-drop bars with dead-parallel ramps/drops, and gel tape all around with a double wrap up top. All that plus thin glove padding and remembering to move my hands around keeps my hands comfy.

But if flat bars work better for you, go for it.

T-Mar

I also endorse modifications that make the bicycle more enjoyable for the owner but with some caveats. The bicycle will eventually be sold or somehow pass on to a new owner. Rarely, does their view of customization coincide with yours. Consequently, OEM spec bicycles almost invariably fetch higher prices and I advise only reversible modifications and that you retain the original spec parts, so that it can be restored to OEM spec.

Smokinapankake

So here's what I was thinking - what if I assembled a cockpit of my choice, using parts I like mounted on a stem and handlebars, complete with cables and housing. I could then effect a "quick change" between drop bars and flat bars. This should work because all the cable housing stops are slotted. The only issue is the rear derailleur cable. I would just have to solder the end so I wouldn't have to clip off the end cap each time I changed over.
I would use my 7 speed XC Pro thumbies so the shift spacing and response would remain the same, and that way I wouldn't have to replace the wheelset as well. Not great shifting performance, I know, but maybe that's part of the charm of C&V? I see alot of bikes here that use more archaic componentry than this one has, and that also probably see alot more miles than this one will....
I have no intention of ever getting rid of whatever parts come off this bike, just place them in a box labeled appropriately.

I just wrapped the bars today, and added an extra layer underneath along the tops of the flats using the 6 or so inches left over after the wrap. So I'll give that a go and see if its any better. The bars are only about an inch below the level of the saddle, the ramp that extends forward before turning downward are level, and the hoods are positioned high enough that the transition onto the hoods is level as well. I also wear gloves with padding in the palms. Since I converted to north road style bars on my commuter (that gets ridden far more than any other bike I own) my hands have been happier than they've been in a very long time. So I may just end up converting like mentioned above.

Thanks so much for your input , its very interesting to hear an insiders' perspective.

Smokinapankake

New tape:




The color is off from the seat a bit but that could be because the seat is old and the tape is new. Dirty it up a bit and it will be fine…

Smokinapankake

Another 15 miles with the new tape and I gotta say for the first 20 minutes or so things were looking pretty good, but then that old familiar feeling came creeping back. Seems like once it starts there’s no stopping the numbness. It occurs to me that maybe my problem has something to do with my carpal tunnel syndrome. So I went and did it: changed over to a flat bar setup. Used an FSA Metropolis handlebar I had hanging around, bought a stem from my collective, and cabled it up. Thanks to the slotted cable guides I should be able to change back to original spec in a matter of minutes. I thought I had a set of XC Pro thumbshifters, but it turned out I had two rear shifters. So I used an XT for the front. Still need to get some grips, and probably change the seat to something black and more compatible with my nether regions. But much better so far! And I don’t feel too guilty about using non spec stuff because it can all go back on pretty easily.

Mr. 66

I think you need some fatties for the Axis.

Smokinapankake

Yes. Yes I do. Specialized Nimbus, 700x38’s will do nicely…




….And the bike is transformed! So so much nicer than the Command shifters and drop bars. Well, not nicer but more comfortable and thus more enjoyable for me. Love that sweet steel feel!
Same 15 mile loop and at the end of it I felt I could go another 15, whereas with the drop bars I couldn’t wait to get off. That may not be a lot of miles to you guys but my commute to work is 17, so I don’t usually do more than 35 miles a day, and that may only be twice a week.. but I’m loving this bike now!