Hydrosloth wrote:
What piece of "vintage" equipment/technology/clothing are you still using, or have gone back to using?
The oldest bike in my stable is a 1979 Fuji America.
Consumables have largely been replaced, although there are some interesting things...
Rear derailleur is a SunTour Cyclone GT. At ~190g I think it's actually the lightest derailleur on any of my bikes, but it's rated for a healthy 36T of wrap and can manage a 34T large cog.
Being from the 70s, it's not indexable and its parallelogram can't sweep across modern wide cassettes. But it has one feature that's head and shoulders above how nearly all other derailleurs do business, and that's the open cage. Besides looking awesome, it also allows you to mount or remove the chain from the derailleur without breaking it.
The BB spindle is asymmetric, and to an
extreme degree. It's about a centimeter longer on the drive side than the non-drive side, and that asymmetry carries all the way to the positions of the pedals. It sounds very lopsided, but I don't notice it while riding. I think the goal was to minimize q-factor: the cranks are triple, but the q-factor measures only about 142mm.
The hubs are SunShine Gyromasters, and use sealed cartridges. I replaced the rear wheel's bearings when they developed play, but to my knowledge, the bearings in the front wheel are the bike's originals.