SunTour suffered from a serious but very creative case of multiple personality disorder. On the one hand it created exquisite, refined and delicate jewels like the Competition and the first generation Cyclones. On the second hand it created madly eccentric designs of freakish originality like the Skitter and SMS Max. And on the third hand it was all about raw power, brutal strength and primal simplicity. This last, and possibly most genuine, tradition gave us the SunTour 888 Wide pull chain derailleurs and the SunTour Honor and SunTour GT.

The SunTour Honor was the mid range, steel workhorse of the SunTour range for two decades. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t light, it wasn’t sophisticated, being steel it was a touch noisy and it certainly wasn’t going to impress your europhile friends in the local cycling club. But it was cheap, strong, reliable and effective.

The first style of SunTour Honor was a SunTour Competition reduced to its most basic elements so that it could be mass produced in steel. The knuckles are steel pressings, and SunTour did not stint on the guage of steel. The outer cable stop, as on the Competition, is mounted on the rear knuckle. The Cable clamp is mounted on only the lower part of the front knuckle. The, rather short, pulley cage is clearly the younger brother of that used on the Competition.

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• Derailleur brands: SunTour
• Categories: SunTour - the Honor story
• Country: Japan
• Date of introduction: 1968
• Date of this example: 1970? (no two letter date code, but spring cover, both pulleys and parallelogram plate are stamped ‘Maeda Industries Ltd.’)
• Model no.: unknown
• Weight: 369g including hanger plate
• Maximum cog: 24 teeth?
• Total capacity: 24 teeth?
• Pulley centre to centre: 46mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: steel

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