Suntour Superbe Pro Rear Derailleur Exploded Diagram

In response to a valued blog reader's inquiry as to the year of his red 80's Specialized Allez SE frame, I went ahead and did a little research to see if I could help out.
A while back, I posted some pics of a similar '85 Allez SE that I sold. The year was an educated guess based on 1) The scan above from my 1985 Suntour Service Manual and 2) American Flyers was released in 1985 and I figured Specialized would've provided them with their latest model.
Since I have another red Allez of the same era that's waiting a restoration job from me with what I believe to be the original components, I went digging for some date codes. The easiest one to find was off the rear derailleur (BD), which the excellent resources at vintage-trek.com dates to 1985!
Now, a few disclaimers here. Although I'm still pretty sure these red Allez's 1985 models, I have seen examples where component date codes precede the model year of the bike. For example, my 1987 Allez's Turbo saddle has an 86 date stamped on it (although I believe the original Sprint derailleur is dated to 1987.) It's certainly possible I have a 1986 model but I have no information to confirm nor deny that these red Allez's were still being produced that year. By the same token, perhaps someone out there has an example with 1984 date codes on them. Dunno... makes my head spin just thinking about it... I'm just going to refer to these Allez's as 1985's!

Sold! 1985 Specialized Allez SE

Let start off by saying I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I didn't post any pics of this bike until after I sold it, and didn't give any of you, valued blog readers, a chance to acquire it. It's really the first bike I've sold out of my 'collection' so I thought I'd start out small and not have to deal with shipping. That said, it practically sold the same day for my asking price anyway. I'm happy, the buyer got a great bike and he's happy, and now there's one less bike in the house so my wife's happy.

Anyway, enough text, on with the pics!




If the white Benotto tape is not original spec, it should be! NOS Suntour Superbe brake levers with reproduction hoods.




Suntour Superbe brakes. I've seen these in two styles. One, as pictured, with the black brake pads, rubber donut on the adjusting barrel, and small blackk rubber plug on the backside where the adjusting barrel enters the arm. The other style has rust-red parts and no plug in the back. I suspect the black might be a later style (1986?) and the red older (1985?). Most of the Allez's I've seen for sale on Craigslist or ripmeBay sport the black versions. To me, the red ones seem rarer.



The brake levers aren't entirely "correct" as the original spec sported the slotted levers. But these NOS examples look pretty darn nice anyway. The repro hoods fit very well, but run a bit small - they're a pain to slide over the lever body and the backs of the hoods don't extend far enough back to the handlebar to cover up my sloppy tape job around the levers.




Original Suntour Superbe friction shifters. The driveside downtube decal is in great shape, but the other side is a bit lacking. The jackass who originally shipped me the bike just threw everything in a box with NO padding or securing. The axle from the rear wheel spent it's entire shipping time rubbing against the downtube decal...




Suntour Superbe derailleurs and Specialized crankset. I really love the low-profile look of these old Specialized and Suntour cranksets - so sleek! The rear wheel is one of the few non-original parts. Sachs Rival hub laced to a newish Mavic MA-40 rim with a Sachs 7 speed freewheel.





When I first received the bike, the previous owner had thrown on a wide-range freewheel and a practically new Deore XT M735 rear derailleur. Nice part, hideous look for this bike. I bought the correct Superbe rear derailleur off eBay and spent a Saturday afternoon watching "Vision Quest" and polishing the heck out of it.



Suntour Superbe Pro Pedals! Wat?! Yes, picked these up a bike swap for super cheap due to the fact that they were tarnished beyond belief. I spent days rubbing them out and polishing them up, only to take a crappy picture that doesn't really show anything...



Well, there she is... When she first came to live with me, she had been converted to a tired, beaten pack mule. Eventually, I restored her back to her original thoroughbred roots and she repaid me with great days in the saddle. Later, she was relegated to lunchtime rides at work duties, until eventually just collecting dust. And now she's gone... *sniff* *sniff* ...hopefully to serve her new owner as well as she did me.