Garrison:
Were you trying to say that the old Suntour Winner (not Microlite) aluminum cogs were superior to Zeus aluminum cogs? If so, I strongly disagree. The Winner aluminum cogs were extremely soft and began to skip quickly after initial usage. As I said, none of the aluminum cogs back then were particularly stunning, but I still maintain that the Zeus ones held up the best in real-world usage. Recall also that the Zeus had only two positions: the first four (five on a seven-speed) were all slide-on of the same inside diameter, and the last one (or "duplex" for a six or seven-speed) were screw-on. No spacers were required with the Al cogs. Brilliant design, pre-dating cassettes!
BTW, there were also steel cogs available for the Zeus body....
Also, when did Suntour Perfect freewheels have more than a standard 5- or 6-speed configuration?
Finally, let's all recall that most narrow-spaced freewheels want a little more than "standard" hub spacing, i.e. about 122 rather than 120, and 127 rather than 125. I think that's the reason that Campy switched their 6-speed rear hubs from 125.0 to 126.5 spacing at some point around 1980ish.
Greg Parker Chief Gearhead, (always thought Berto's stuff was cool but over the top) A2 MI USA
In a message dated 6/12/02 2:21:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time, classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org writes:
> Message: 13
> Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 16:58:43 -0700
> To: Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org>,
> classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> From: Brandon Ives <monkeylad@mac.com>
> Subject: [CR]Re: Vintage Freewheels
>
> At 2:10 PM -0700 6/11/02, Garrison Hilliard wrote:
> >One could do the same thing with the Suntour "Winner" and
> >"Perfect" freewheels, also... and the Suntour (Maeda) cogs were
> >far superior to the Zues (sic) cogs!
>
> Oh too true. . .
> Also Suntour invented the "Ultra" spaced freewheels I think. The
> whole idea was to add an extra cog without widening the overall width
> of the FW. I'd have to pull down my copy of "The Dancing Chain" to
> be sure but I'm already late for dinner.
> Enjoy,
> Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
>
> PS: If anyone needs Suntour alloy cogs try contacting The Bikesmith
> in Seattle. When Suntour went under in the US one of their old
> employees brought in a huge stash of the cogs. I'm sure Val has some
> left in a box on a shelf in the back.
> enjoy,
> Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
> North of LA, South of SLO