If your experience, prior to this combo, was with European equipment, I'm sure BarCon+Crane seemed pretty darned nice. But I tried it after using all SunTour setups, so I was used to better shifting. I got tired of Suntour ders. developing slop after relatively few miles, so bought some Cranes. I was very unhappy with the result, till I added the demultiplicators.
Over the years I installed 25-30 demultiplicators for riders unhappy with the shifting of Shimano/Huret/Campy rear shifting when used with BarCons. Most of these were on bikes with SunTour Ultra spaced freewheels.
At 10/23/2004 01:35 PM -0400, 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.
>Mark Stonich wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
>Mark Stonich;
> BikeSmith Design & Fabrication LLC
> http://bikesmithdesign.com