i have recently acquired this Apollo VI with Suntour Superbe components. i have no knowledge with vintage road bikes so any information about this frame and its components would be much appreciated!
Beautiful bike. I think Kuwahara made them. Ishiwata’s 019 was a light tubeset comparable to Columbus SL. There were even lighter tubesets 017 and 015 but that was super-rare.
That frame has really nice lugwork and fork crown work.
Suntour Superbe was their top of the line, later Superbe Pro with sintered treatment was probably the lightest and most pre-indexing beautiful component group. I liked it way better than Campy. I used to like pairing the Superbe Pro deraillers with Ofmega’s Mistral crankset back in the 80’s. But then indexing and ‘group integration’ happened where Shimano took the variables out of parts to make them all work in sync so that went out the window.
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Beautiful bike. I think Kuwahara made them. Ishiwata’s 019 was a light tubeset comparable to Columbus SL. There were even lighter tubesets 017 and 015 but that was super-rare.
That frame has really nice lugwork and fork crown work.
Suntour Superbe was their top of the line, later Superbe Pro with sintered treatment was probably the lightest and most pre-indexing beautiful component group. I liked it way better than Campy. I used to like pairing the Superbe Pro deraillers with Ofmega’s Mistral crankset back in the 80’s. But then indexing and ‘group integration’ happened where Shimano took the variables out of parts to make them all work in sync so that went out the window.
[https://www.velowizard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_8936.jpg](https://www.velowizard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_8936.jpg)
Anyway, beautiful rare high end Japanese road bike. Address that rust around the lugs before it spreads anymore.