The work I did on this SR was the start of my bicycle restoration and general maintenance education.  I watched on-line videos, bought and read books on how to set up bikes and keep them on-the-road.  As of the writing of this, I have over ten years of work and experience rebuilding and keeping my daily riders out there.   Another thing my work has done is given me a real appreciation for the Japanese company Suntour.  I won't get into the extensive history of the Suntour company, but just to say they were indeed a major contributor to some of the technologies still being used in the road bike industry to this day.  There is an excellent article written by Frank J. Berto called The Sunset of Suntour, which can be read via the link in this sentence.  Frank's article gives a very detailed history and final demise of the Suntour company.    One item that Suntour created, and will always remain famous for, was their Slant-Parallelogram Rear Derailleur.    The first picture at the top of this page is a fine example of Suntour's best early version of that derailleur, the Superbe Pro RD-3100 friction shifter.  I used this later derailleur on both my SR above, but also on the first full restoration of a 1980 Fuji Newest (later).  I jumped on the Suntour bandwagon and used them almost exclusively on my future road bike projects.  Returning to the Slant-Parallelogram rear derailleur, Suntour held the patent on that device from 1964 through 1984.  It indeed made Suntour a king of the derailleur world over that period of time.  Case in point, after their patent expired in 1984, within the next three or four years, every other rear derailleur manufacturer converted over to that Slant-Parallelogram methodology or they went out of business.    Sadly without that patent protection, the small sized Suntour's years were numbered and within ten years they were done!

Over the past ten years, I've refurbished and upgraded many bikes.   Out of those I'm to the point now where I have three main riders that get road used during our biking season here in the upper midwest of America, or basically six to seven months out of the year.  Here are my current main road bikes as of 2026.

For those who are interested I will attest that the components I used on my Newest refurbishment are of higher quality that those used by Fuji in 1980.  To be noted, Fuji was a big user of the Suntour components.  However, I must explain in Japan there was two major bike manufacturing associations in the 1960's moving forward, the JEX (Japan Bicycle Parts Manufacturers Group for Export Promotion) and the  JBM (Japan Bicycle Manufacturers Group).  Each group had their specific member companies and there was even a few that crossed over into both.  However, as far are derailleurs are concerned the two Japanese companies were Suntour and their main competitor Shimano.   Suntour was in the JEX and Shimano was in the JBM!  Most often if you bought a bike it would use all components that were made by members of one group or the other.  Again, there was some cross over too.  At this point I need to explain that Suntour really only made derailleurs.  True there were other bike components branded with the Suntour name that appeared in their catalogs, but those were custom manufactured for Suntour by other members of the JEX!  Most often Suntour did offer a superior product than the manufacturing company made for their own branded sales, i.e. Suntour had other manufacturers build them better components.  As a result those Suntour branded components would also cost more that the OEM versions.  So when Fuji would use a OEM branded component it saved them money over buying the same component in Suntours top-of-the-line offering.   During my refurbishments I did not have such a cost savings goal and I could buy the best that Suntour had to offer, albeit on the used market.   In the case of my Fuji Newest, I essentially built a better quality bike than their higher rung Professional model.    Notice also, at the top of this page is the picture of the rear dropout on my Newest and as can be seen even Fuji used Suntours top end Superbe Pro dropouts on these frames.

An aside regarding Suntour vs Shimano.  They were both great companies.  Shimano was always a bigger company and had divisions in other sporting areas, fishing reels for example.    When Suntour wanted a Suntour branded crank they went to Sugino to get them to make one special for them.  However, when Shimano wanted to have a Shimano branded crank they just bought the other JBM member company, in this case they bought Takagi and from that point onward they were part of the Shimano Company and branded so.

1986 Fuji Fully Custom (Middle) -  The middle bike in the above line-up was acquired at the end of 2017.  Like the Newest before it, this was also just purchased as a frame only.   It came to me with no decals or affixed stickers.  It was identified as a Fuji via the serial number on the Bottom Bracket ( C652 C6 = March 1986 Custom Manufacture number 52) and the like dated Fuji branded fork crowns.    Since I was again going to cover this bike in all things Suntour, I chose their first, and last, generation of Indexed shifting rear derailleurs, the RD-SB00-SSB Superbe Pro.  On all my Suntour equipped bikes I also use their BP-100 bearing pully's.  In this case they were standard on the derailleur, but on my other bikes these would have been separately added after.

One of my first jobs was an attempt to better identify the frame materials.  During this time frame Fuji did hire out to other custom frame manufacturers to make some frames for them.  They even had a series of frames that they sold less components.   These later frames were labeled as their "Design Series".    My frame was never labeled and the metallic purple color was not on any other bikes that Fuji made during that time frame.  After corresponding with those who were experts  on the Japanese bikes frame makers of that time frame, they identified my bike as a product of the company Cherubim.   Cherubim continues to this day making very highend specialized frames and bikes.      I did add the Fuji identifier and a custom made sticker to the down tube that identifies my full Suntour component additions.