I think that the SunTour Le Tech was SunTour’s second foray into the world of three pivot derailleurs (the Trimec (6400?) being the first) - and the Le Tech is a blinder - I particularly like the oh-so-modern ‘computer’ type face.

I remember the Le Tech being presented as a pure touring gear - SunTour’s response to the 1981 Shimano Deore. It was Cyclone quality and combined SunTour’s slant parallelogram with the joys of a three pivot design. It gave a very small and consistent chain gap and a lightening quick and pin-point accurate gear change.

With the gift of hindsight, its most surprising feature is that it had a conventional guide pulley that you could remove and replace. I never knew why SunTour ditched this design and adopted the fatally flawed Trimec configuration for the first MounTech models.

However 1982 was not the time to launch a radical touring derailleur - the tidal wave of mountain bike hysteria was just crashing onto the shores of the bicycle world and the Le Tech got washed away in the turbulence.

A forgotten work of (fragile) genius.

____________________________________________

1. •Brand: SunTour
   

2. •My category: SunTour - Frank Berto and the curse of Duopar
   

3. •Country: Japan
   

4. •Date of introduction: 1982?
   

5. •Date of this example: 1983 (two letter date code is ZL)
   

6. •Model no: 5900
   

7. •Weight: 308g
   

8. •Maximum cog: 34 teeth?
   

9. •Total capacity: 40 teeth?
   

10. •Pulley centre to centre: 80mm
    

11. •Index compatibility: friction
    

12. •Chain width: 3/32”
    

13. •Logic: top normal
    

14. •Pivots: three pivots, rear unsprung and the other two sprung
    

15. •Material: largely aluminium with steel pulley cage plates, link element plate and inner parallelogram plate
    

0152/E