Harvey M Sachs wrote:
>I'll agree with Amir that the Huret Challenger is nice, but it just
>went about its business of shifting the chain. It was hardly the
>most interesting FD Huret did. For that, I have a couple of nominees:
>
>1) The early '60s unit that was paired with the Allvit (and all
>others). This one had key differences from the competing Campy
>"GS" "plunger-in-a-box" road grit accumulator: it was a
>parallelogram, and all sheet metal except the rod and bolts. So, it
>inherently worked better. But, it also had one similarity to the
>unlamented Campy: there was only one stop screw; the other
>adjustment was made by sliding the rod along the attachment bolt. In
>the case of the Huret, you first adjusted the inner limit (with the
>rod sliding), and then the outer limit with the screw. A corollary
>of using the round rod was that the angle of the cage could be
>adjusted, so it would work (more or less) with bent-tube bikes.
The ability to change the pitch angle of the cage was sometimes very useful. I used one of these on my Moulton Mk.3 with a custom made 72 tooth chainring. No other front derailer would work.
For some reason, none of the older front derailers would upshift well without a bit of tweaking. The trick was to use an adjustable wrench to bend the forward tip of the inner cage plate to the right a bit. That way, once the chain had risen up to the level of the bigger ring, the bent tip would shove it over so it would mesh.
This modification made a HUGE improvement in upshifting.
Modern front derailers have much more 3-dimensional cage plates, and don't generally need a lot of surgery unless you're using unusual chainring sizes.
Sheldon "Bend It Better" Brown
+------------------------------------+
| Like Celtic-flavoured folk/rock? |
| Check out my favorite podcast: |
| http://celticmusicnews.com |
+------------------------------------+
--
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com
Useful articles about bicycles and cycling
http://sheldonbrown.com