In a message dated 10/15/02 10:43:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time, tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com writes:
<< Could you elaborate on this? I have never actually met someone who rebuilt a Campy derailleur. They are certainly easy to overhaul and if for some reason you want to replace a spring or pulley or whatever, it's a breeze. However, the bodies on all but the latest NR/SR rears were riveted together with non-reusable peened or swaged pins, so replacing the pins and bushings to reduce the slop in the parallelogram must have been a chore.>>
The difficulty now is in finding the parts, i.e., new pins and bushings. They used to be cheap, I have some that I'm saving for something special, but they may still be available cheap because everyone seems to be afraid of using them. The difficulty in the old days was doing the job and not leaving tool marks. To do it right, you need to mill or carve out a block of wood to hold the bodies (upper and lower), and to drill a passage for the departing rivet. You also need a hollow ground pin punch that is the correct size or better yet, access to a press. A second set of hands for the operation is quite useful. In the old days, most shops would open the vice a touch to clear the rivets and use the vice body as a supporting anvil and tap away with a chewed up punch. Results were usually functional if less than cosmetically perfect. A machinist with a press could do a good job, but not too many bikies knew a suitable machinist or could afford one, so a lot of derailleurs got replaced rather than rebushed.
<<Have you ever done this? What are the results? When you add up the price of the parts, and factor in time, wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy a new unit? By the time this needed to be done, I would figure on replacing the pulleys, the cage spindle bushing and maybe the springs. Doesn't it start to become less than cost-effective?>> Unless you're doing it for yourself, it probably is cheaper to just buy another one. If you keep those 4 little bushings lubricated (not over-lubricated), they will probably never wear out. One of those little oilers that looks like a hypodermic needle will make your Campy parts sweet, if you know where to put a drop of lube.
Remember, on the Japanese derailleurs, the parallelogram return spring it
fitted by a one-way drive pin into a blind hole. If you want it out, you have
to drill it out and that's not feasible. I haven't had to do the
bushing/rivet replacement yet, because I keep mine properly lubed. The
rebuildability I was referring to is the normal stuff you can get parts for.
Stevan Thomas
Alameda, CA