With a clever cable route, a relatively low price, exceedingly light weight and with a great shift, the SunTour Cyclone GT was a miracle. To this day the Shimano XTR is heavier than this Cyclone GT - proof of the simple purity of the single-sprung pivot slant parallelogram design.

The second style of SunTour Cyclone GT had a slightly redesigned rear knuckle and a captive short hanger bolt (with a distinctive serrated edge).

There is a legend that photographers covering the Vietnam war painted their Nikon Fs black - so that they did not glint in the sun and catch the eagle-eye of Viet Cong snipers. Almost immediately black enamel became de rigeur on ‘professional’ cameras. It did not take long for this fashion to transfer to cycle components, and throughout the 1970s derailleur manufacturers used black enamel to signal that their top-of-the-range models were professional class. Here we see it on the SunTour Cyclone GT, but Shimano used black on their Crane and even Campagnolo blackened the knuckles of the Super Record.

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• Derailleur brands: SunTour
• Categories: SunTour - the Cyclone story
• Country: Japan
• Date of introduction: 1976?
• Date of this example: 1976 (two letter date code is SA)
• Model no.: 5905
• Weight: 189g
• Maximum cog: 32 teeth (hanger 29mm or less) or 34 teeth (hanger 32mm or more) (Source: SunTour)
• Total capacity: 36 teeth (Source: SunTour)
• Pulley centre to centre: 67mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: aluminium

Ref. 172