Back in the day, Bill Boston modified Campy (record) front derailleurs for the tandems he made, to move them out. A couple of times, I have modified Shimano Tourney FD, both moving the attachment point (cage to parallelogram) backwards and lengthening the cage, to get wider range and get the cage to track the outer ring more closely. A whole bunch of work, but whaddya gonna do?
harvey sachs mcLean va usa. +++++++++++++++ Jerome & Elizabeth Moos wrote:
>> I think it's pretty easy to get classic gearing as low as you want >> it, provided you are willing to use a classic crank like TA >> Cyclotourist or Stronglight 99 that will take a very small inner >> ring. But if you still want a resonably large top gear, you have to >> pair it with a long cage derailleur like Huret Duopar, Campy Rally or >> one of several long cage Suntours.
For me, the problem isn't the rear derailleurs but the front derailleurs. There are any number of on-topic wide range rear derailleurs but fronts are a different matter. I used to run a 14-30 freewheel on my Gitane tandem with a 54T large chainring. I never found a front derailleur that would work on this with anything smaller than a 32T inner ring (54-48-32), even though the Stronglight 99 crank could handle down to a 28T ring.
-- John Thompson (john@os2.dhs.org) Appleton WI USA