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.

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• Derailleur brands: SunTour
• Categories: SunTour - Frank Berto and the curse of Duopar
• Country: Japan
• Date of introduction: 1982?
• Date of this example: 1983 (two letter date code is ZL)
• Model no.: 5900
• Weight: 308g
• Maximum cog: 34 teeth?
• Total capacity: 40 teeth?
• Pulley centre to centre: 80mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: two, both sprung
• Materials: largely aluminium with steel pulley cage plates, link element plate and inner parallelogram plate

Ref. 152