On Oct 23, 2004, at 1:35 PM, David G. White wrote:
> With all due respect, my opinion differs regarding combining Suntour
> bar-cons with a Crane rear derailleur. That is exactly the combination
> I had on my Jack Taylor beginning and 1974 and continuing for over 25
> years. I loved it! It always worked well for me. I'm about to put that
> combo on my 1975 Colin Laing.
>
If anyone is interested, I have NOS precisely this combo (crane rear derailler/ST bar-cons) from the early '70s that is about to go up on Ebay, but I'd be happy to sell them directly.
BTW, a friend of mine who was a racer until about '74, has a number of Campy-equipped road and track bikes from that era that she is tired of hanging in her basement. I'll probably put some pictures up on the web and ask for some opinions on the best way to deal with them. They are all in the 52 cm range.
Baird
>
>
>
> Mark Stonich wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> 2) Crane/DuraAce are age-appropriate, but Berto/Dancing Chain says
>>> they don't work as well as Suntour. Votes?
>>
>>
>> Berto was a big fan of Suntour BarCons, and he was into huge
>> freewheels. Suntour's slant parallelogram gave them a real advantage
>> on really big freewheels. But Cranes were OK up to about 30t and were
>> more durable.
>>
>> In those days SunTours shifters and rear derailleurs were designed
>> to work with more cable travel, and less cable tension than their
>> competition. (A superior idea IMHO) If you hooked a Crane up to ST
>> BarCons, a small amount of lever travel translated into overly large
>> movements at the rear. And the increased cable tension of the Crane
>> meant the Barcon friction had to be adjusted too tightly, making it's
>> movements jerky instead of smooth. Combine the 2 directly and
>> shifting was crap. However, if you put a Simplex Demultiplicator
>> Relias between them, all was sweetness and light.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>
>> Mark Stonich;
>> BikeSmith Design & Fabrication LLC
>> http://bikesmithdesign.com