Road bike drive-train components.?

Question

i have two questions in one. i own a nishiki sebring from the 80's. the rear derailler is suntour, which i believe is stock, and the front is shimano, which i believe was added on after-market. if i want them to be the same would you suggest i side with the suntour or the shimano, which is "better."

also i have another little huffy step-through bike which suprised me by the fact that is has shimano skylark components. anyone have any info about these and what kind of quality they are?

thanks.

Answer 1

Suntour was NOT taken over by Shimano. Sheesh.

I would recommend that you stay with Shimano components as Suntour stuff is hard to find- it is no longer made. Being an older bike you will likely have to be sure that shifters are compatible with modern stuff and that the derailleurs can handle the gear range in the back which tended to be very wide.

I think you mean Shimano "Lark". These are very early parts from Shimano which also included "Eagle". These parts predate the articulated parallelogram rear derailleur invented by Suntour and as all major manufacturers use today. For the time period they were not terrible stuff, but by todays standards they are obsolete.

Good luck!

Answer 2

suntour was taken over by shimano. suntour was known to have the best indexing system, and shimano bought them and incorporated some of thier patents into thier systems.  unless you were to search ebay for old suntour parts you will have to go with shimano now.

shimano makes lower line parts for department store bikes.  there isnt nec anything wrong with them, but they are usually pretty clunky to make them stand up to kids and such.

Answer 3

Well, if you are replacing your components with more modern ones I would suggest going for the Shimano (being the largest component manufacturer in the world means they are very easy to acquire). It is hard to tell you which one is actually better, because you don't list the actual model of each, Sun Tour and Shimano both had high and low-end components and a high-end sun tour could be light-years beyond a low-end shimano (and vice versa).

As for your other question, the Skylark was just an entry level shimano component, nothing too fancy, but because they are shimano they are probably of a higher quality than most low-end components.