Answering myself here with stuff remembered as I drifted off to sleep.
I had the New Winner/Winner cog configuration stuff wrong. The New Winner body had a splined section for the two biggest cogs and two different threaded sections. The Winner/Winner Pro body had a much longer splined section and only one thread size (for the smallest cog), similar to a freehub/cassette configuration. With either body an outer threaded cog with its own outboard thread would accept an outboard cog allowing Ultra-7 or standard 6spd builds.
There was a third problem with 1st-gen Winner/Winner Pro freewheels I had forgotten. SunTour went from steel to plastic spacers to save costs, but didn't realize that the plastic spacers compressed, resulting in play on the splined cogs. Under load the smallest splined cog sometimes slipped off the splined section, wreaking havoc. Third step backwards....
The fix was to rush steel spacers into production, while adding steel microspacer/shims to the plastic spacers until the plastic spacers were used up. There was also a cog spacing go/no-go gauge developed so dealers could check whether microspacers were needed or not.
The pattern I often saw was intelligent product development and improvement sabotaged by ill-considered and insufficiently tested production changes initiated to cut production costs. Factory testing and Japanese dealer/rider feedback seldom revealed product flaws, and by the time product reached the US (where my dealers and their shop rats took pride in how quickly they could break anything) it was too late to change 1st-gen product.
I've been thinking about how to respond to the recent Japanese-vs-others threads, especially regarding components. As far as SunTour is concerned, they didn't start producing high-quality high-end lightweight road equipment until the very late 70s. They blossomed in the early 80s, constantly shot themselves in the foot during the mid-80s and by '90 they were history. They might arguably merit more attention, but low mojo is understandable when you consider they only had a scant 5 or 6 years of high-end market presence during our CR timeline, and much of that trajectory was hurtling downwards, out of control.
After 20yrs+ of riding nothing but Japanese componentry, thanks to the pernicious influence of this list I'm finding myself riding my first-ever all-Campy classic bikes. Looking at SunTour (at their zenith) or Shimano components you can see and feel talented engineers being challenged, season after season, to improve performance and design. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but there's no tradition there, no warm fuzzy from riding the same stuff that generations of racers and enthusiasts rode the world 'round.
This is degenerating way off-topic, but I often ask myself why Japan is such a hotbed of collectors of quintessential anything (you name it: Italian racing bikes, French touring bikes, Fender guitars, Macintosh amplifiers, Zippo lighters, Levi's jeans, Leica cameras, etc). Daily life full of the fruits of technological prowess and constant product improvement, while some drawers and cabinets and closets are stuffed full of minty examples of quintessential technology that rarely changed.
Cheers,
PB
Paul C. Brodek
Hillsdale, N.J. U.S.A.
E-mail: pcb@skyweb.net