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Sun Tour ®
From the early '70s to the mid '80s, Sun Tour (Maeda) was the most important Japanese maker of bicycle parts. Sun Tour invented the slant-parallelogram design for rear derailers, and made the best-shifting derailers in the world for many years, until the patent ran out.
Other major Sun Tour innovations included:
- "Power Ratchet" shift levers, which used a ratchet mechanism to disengage the friction mechanism from the lever when it was being pulled against the tension of the derailer's return spring. This created a lighter lever action than other friction-type shift levers.
- The first widely distributed freewheels using splined sprockets.
- Asymmetrical sprocket teeth to improve shifting.
- Thumb shifters.
Sun Tour also marketed several technologies licensed from other companies:
- Roller-cam brakes. (Wilderness Trail Bikes)
- Self-energizing brakes. (Scott Peterson)
- Greaseguard ® hubs, bottom brackets and headsets. (Wilderness Trail Bikes)
Unfortunately, Sun Tour failed to maintain the inventive spirit that put it in the lead in bicycle components, and Shimano's success with indexed shifting left Sun Tour playing catch-up. Sun tour never caught up, and it became almost impossible to sell a bicycle that didn't feature Shimano shifting systems. As a result of this, along with poor customer service, Sun Tour went bankrupt in the early 1990s. For details of this story, you may read Frank Berto's article "Sunset for Sun Tour"
The Sun Tour name has been purchased and revived by Sakae Ringyo, though the new SR/Suntour parts are not compatible with the original Japanese SunTour parts.
For more, see the page about SunTour history.
