I have an all original 1971 Hetchins Italia that was purchased directly from Hetchins in the UK and brought back to the US. It has an all steel Suntour GT long arm derailleur. Supposedly Alf Hetchins disliked the Campy Gran Turismo derailleurs so much that he chose to use the cheap Suntour GT instead.
The Suntour certainly shifts much better than the 15 oz. "grim reaper's scythe" Campy Gran Turismo! (I have one that I keep on my desk as a decoration)
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
Jerome & Elizabeth Moos wrote:
> Or the Shimano Crane GS. Schwinn used the half-ton Gran Tourismo RD on the 1970 touring Paramount, but by 1973 they had switched to the Crane GS on all the higher end touring models. AFAIK Campy never did recapture the Schwinn touring business even after introducing the excellent Rally. Spence's homebrews were probably superior to the Gran Trashmo, but not the Suntour, Shimano or Rally. Oddly, Campy retrogressed somewhat my making a later version of the Rally which was basically a commercialized version of Spence's homebrews - an NR body with a Rally cage.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, Texas, USA
>
>> From: donald gillies
>> Subject: Re: [CR] Spence Wolfe Bikes - Drink tthe Koolaid
>> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>> Date: Sunday, December 6, 2009, 11:56 PM
>> It strikes me that there was really
>> no reason to add
>> an alpine cage to a Campagnolo derailleur after the
>> Suntour VGT derailleur was released, other than for
>> snobbish reasons. So in what era did these modified
>> Cinellis etc. get built? If they were built after
>> 1970, what a waste, what a waste ...
>>
>> - Don Gillies
>> San Diego, CA, USA