Hello everyone.
I work with people with learning disabilities for a living, and one guy I work with is very keen on cycling (a big part of why I got my job). Unfortunately his shed was broken into and his bikes were nicked last weekend when I was working with him.
I took him out and we bought a new bike for him at a car boot sale - it's a Giant Track, it has a butted 4130 frame - would have been quite a decent piece of kit in its day. The bike doesn't appear to have one piece of Shimano equipment on it - which is quite nice in a way, an anti-establishment bike can be quite good fun (could even make me feel quite naughty if I thought about it🙂) but the shifter may have had it which is my problem. The entire groupset is Suntour X-1. I would like to replace the shifter, but I am unable to find any shifters at local shops, and I'm not sure about actuation ratios which I'm worried might stop a Shimano or SRAM shifter from working properly. The other concern I have is that the block may not be hyperglide, and have different spacing between the cogs than Shimano's version.
As you can probably guess, money for this project is very limited, as the guy who owns the bike lives on benefits and simply can't afford to pay for a new mech, shifter, chain and casette.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Chris