Tom Dalton made an observation about this der. that, I am embarrassed to say, slipping by me. Nice work Tom. He noticed that the lower body of the parallelogram did not seem up to snuff as he remembered a NR should look. So, I went back to the Ebay photos..............DAMN! he's right. In fact, the upper body is not NR either. The ONLY thing that is NR on this entire der. is the outer arm. In other words, this is the stock GS Rally except for the outer arm.
This new information negates my earlier theory about how easy it would be to make this beast. It would now be much more difficult and much more skill needed to pull this off. I can be done. But, because of the effort involved, I am less likely to think a mentally disturbed or agenda driven individual did this.
Therefore, I must apologize to all people that stood by the theory that it is a bonafide Campy model. However, the date of this derailleur is still about '84 or later.
Here is my current opinion: I have no clue! Why would Campagnolo compromise the "Record" heritage by creating such a beast, especially when the GS Rally model was in production PRIOR to this. It doesn't make any sense. Maybe this was a glimpse into the poor decision making to come from Valentino Campagnolo :-) I don't know, and I give up.
Marc Boral Long Beach, CA
At 09:14 AM 11/28/2001, Hilary Stone wrote:
>Some were fitted with the plastic cover things for a couple of years on
>derailleurs sold in Britain but by 1980 they had disappeared off the gears
>for the British market.
> One final point I would like to make about this derailleur is how I
>bought it. At Haddenham Cyclejumble a couple of weeks ago a couple of old
>boys came along with a couple of boxes of bits and a bike. I bought a few
>bits off them and the bike which was fitted with this derailleur. The bike
>and the mech were absolutely encrusted with dried up road dirt and grease -
>it took a lot of cleaning but clearly shows only a little use. So the
>derailleur was not found separately or sold to me as a 'special' item. I
>believe totally in its provenance - there is no way it is a forgery. And I
>think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Campagnolo made a number
>of these derailleurs - the NOS one that turned up in the UK, David Benson's
>one in NZ, and the ones that Chuck Schmidt has seen. The fact that all these
>use the same combo of parts suggest that they came from a common source
>which can only be Campag themselves.
>
>Hilary Stone, Bristol
>
>
> > In a message dated 11/27/01 10:47:59 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> > Lsquaredb@aol.com writes:
> >
> > << The adjuster screws have springs rather than plastic cones, so they're
> > earlier. >>
>
>Dale added:>
> > Those plastic CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) "protective" things
> > were just for the USA were they not?