Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Someone should make a t-shirt


I know I could go to cafepress and do this myself, but it would be cool if someone else took this image, cleaned it up (remove the numbers and give it a transparent background), and made a t-shirt out of it.

This is my favorite shifter of all time. The good old Suntour barcon. I like the updated version too (the Rivendell Silvers), but the Suntours are just simple and cheap and smooth. They'll shift any chain over any freewheel with any derailleur. You can still find these NOS for around $30 if you keep your eye out.

I just put some Shimano 8-speed bar-end shifters on my resurrected RB-1, and I really don't like them. They're just clunky and hard to shift compared to the Suntours. But they're easier to set up if you don't have bar tape, since they have a nice receiver/channel for a 5mm shifter cable with ferrule. The Suntours don't have the channel: you need to secure the shifter cable to the shifter with bar tape. When I get some bar tape I'm going to swap out the Shimanos for my favorite Suntour barcons. 

BTW: component number 15 from the picture above is the money piece. You loose that sucker and you're SOL as far as I can tell.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If there is a demand for replacement part #15s then shoot me an email. That would be an easy part to make a small batch of.