[CR]Re: Re-engineering old derailleurs

(Example: Component Manufacturers:Chater-Lea)

Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 10:28:19 -0800 (PST)
From: "Bruce Schrader" <bcschrader@yahoo.com>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
In-Reply-To: <CATFOODKjYelTARBP6B00001ca9@catfood.nt.phred.org>
Subject: [CR]Re: Re-engineering old derailleurs

I am interested in this topic for several reasons and have several ideas which I haven't tried yet.

1) I like thumb shifters on my daily commute bike which has flat bars. (Not Shimano Rapid Fire and all that stuff).

2) I'd like some adapters that would allow me to mount my Campy down tube shifters up on the flat bars in a friction thumb shifter arrangement.

3) I don't care either way if they index or are infinitly variable. All my index shifters seem to want to be cleaned, oiled, and adjusted far too often to keep them operating properly to suit me so I wind up overshifting them most of the time anyway.

4) I use some Suntour thumb shifters in the friction mode but I'd rather use some Campy shifters.

5) Those variable ratio bell cranks that were talked about and shown recently seems like a possible solution to get an index shifter to work on an older derailleur that was meant for friction shifting. I think Simplex made them. But they're nothing complicated that couldn't be made up by almost anyone. With one of those, you could vary the amount of travel the derailleur moved for each detent of the lever without worrying about the diameter of the lever barrel or the amount of cable it pulled between detents.

6) As far as lowering the derailleur and running it parallel with some long cages... I've made my own long cages and they'll take up more chain for a third, small chainring in the front but won't shift anything bigger than a 26 tooth in the rear. But maybe using a longer derailleur hanger would solve that problem also.

Bruce Schrader San Francisco

===== "Not all those that wander are lost." -J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

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