Vintage Components

kdelong

I was given some brand new vintage equipment, NOS stuff. A freind of my mother's is the widow of a shop owner who died in the mid 1980's and she still had this equipment left over. It is all early Dura Ace equipment consisting of hubs, five speed freewheel, friction shift levers, front derailer, head set, cup and cone BB, cranks, and assorted brackets and cables. The only thing that is not Dura Ace is the rear derailer which has the word "Crane" on it. There are also no brakes but I am going to use an old set of single pivot Shimano 600EX brakes and levers that I have had for years. I just have a few questions:
Is the Shimano Crane RD appropriate to use with other Shimano Dura Ace components of the same era? I don't know if it is inferior quality or as good as Dura Ace. It appears to be very good quality but it does look a little strange compared to modern RDs.
Does anyone have any idea when this equipment was availble? I want to find a good vintage frame to use with these items but I don't know what years I should shoot for.

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alfeng

Nice gift!

While the FIRST GENERATION of Dura Ace components came out in the early-to-mid-70s (?), AFAIK, there wasn't a rear derailleur included in the original Dura Ace group; and, the Crane was Shimano's top-of-the-line rear derailleurs in the mid-70s -- Shimano used to have a time-line on their components (maybe, they still do) -- the "crane" is apparently the most highly regarded bird/animal in Japanese culture, and that was why those derailleurs were given that name ... so, you're probably good-to-go with that rear derailleur ...

As you might suspect, I have a Crane GS (long cage) rear derailleur which I bought in ~1976 (as I recall) ... it came with a derailleur hanger. Compared to a modern rear derailleur, it looks strange because of the long parallelogram AND it predates incorporating SunTour's SLANT geometry.

The original DA front derailleur was a copy of a Campy or Huret, AFAIK; but, the outer cage has FOUR open slots (similar to Huret's & an homage to "drillium" influence, no doubt). And, the original (?) Dura Ace single-pivot brake caliper appears to have been a copy of a Campagnolo Gran Sport (that is, the quick release "cam" looks like the one on a Gran Sport -- these apparently predate Shimano's use of their current NN-xxxxx number system). There was Dura Ace version of the center pull caliper ... I never actually saw a pair on a bike, but I presume they were copies of Weinmann center pulls.

The SECOND (?) version of the Dura Ace components dates to the late 70s (1978 comes to mind, but it might have been a little later) which preceded the indexed SIS "stuff" of the early 80s. My recollection is that the brake caliper from the second DA generation (i.e., post-1978) had a vertical buttress (similar to what you would find on some MAVIC calipers).

What I remember the most about the late-70s version of the DA rear derailleur (I still have one of those, too!) is that the upper jockey wheel had steel teeth capping the plastic pulley wheel & the parallelogram was definitely shorter than the Crane's parallelogram.

Also, the second generation DA components used 6mm Allen wrenches for the various bolts rather than having traditional hex headed bolts.

Since the 70s & 80s were the era of mixing-and-matching the "best" components (by performance OR price), having a bike with a full group was not as common as they are now ...

The outer plate on the 1978 front derailleur was NOT slotted ... and, the two plates were not perfectly parallel (at least, that's the way it looked to me -- slightly wider spacing in the rear) to slightly mitigate chain rub (OR, it was something I inadvertantly did for that reason).

Because I felt that the Dura Ace front derailleur from this generation (circa 1978+) was superior to the Campagnolo design, I used one of the second generation DA front derailleurs on a bike that had a Crane rear derailleur + one on a bike that had a NR rear derailleur & SunTour Superbe calipers ... your parts don't all have to be from the same generation, so your 600EX calipers should also be fine ...

I don't think the EX designation was appended until the 80s ... the DA-EX rear derailleur had a black stenciled parallelogram (Like on the Campagnolo Super Record rear derailleur vs. the Campagnolo Nuovo Record rear derailleurs) instead of the the name being cast into the parallelogram of the "original" Dura Ace rear derailleur.

So, FWIW, I reckon that you are looking for any "nice" lugged steel frame (but, an Italian or Japanese frame would probably be more "correct" than others might be) which dates from 1960-to-1977 (but, as late as 1985) to put those suh-weet SHIMANO components on.

stevebaby

Thanks Alf, that's helped me as well.

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kdelong

Thank you for the information Alfeng. I have my eye on an old Fuji frame from the late 70's. The seller is getting back to me with the size. I hope it fits.

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One life, one chance. Don't waste it!