Quoted message said:On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 04:08:24 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:In article <[email hidden]>,
Tim McNamara said:In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] wrote:
> On the one hand, riders worry about every gram of components and then
> they use deep cross section rims and hubs with a large center piece.
Add a beer gut and 10 pounds of water in a backpack. I snicker to
myself every time I see some obese guy wearing a Camelback riding a Trek
Madone. But hey, if it makes 'em happy tain't none of my business. I'm
glad to see them out riding bike.
Not only deep cross section rims and fat hubs, but also groupsets in
general that weigh as much or more than group sets of 25-30 years ago.
Interesting if true! Can you pull some numbers that back this up? I'd
note one conceded exception: the notorious Huret Jubilee derailer:
Why do you characterise this gear as "notorious"? There was some very
good engineering in it - like the locking mechanism for the pivot
bolt.
Dear J.,
In "The Dancing Chain," 2nd edition, Frank Berto says:
"In 1972, Huret introduced the elegant Jubilee front and rear
derailleurs. This was the 'lightness' decade [1965-1974], when
everything except water bottles and pumps was drilled out. At 133 g (4
oz.), the Huret Jubilee was one of the lightest rear derailleurs ever
made. It shifted quite well if you did not push its capacity. The rear
Jubilee was a conventional two-pulley parallelogram design. The true
capacity was about a 24-tooth sprocket. Huret made a long-cage touring
version of the Jubilee for a few years, but it was really too
delicate. The final version of the Jubilee had a drilled-out cage.
Today, surviving Jubilees are prized by collectors."
"There is a bit of controversy over the weight of the Jubilee rear
derailleur. Huret listed the weights from 133 to 148 g. The
drilled-cage versions were actually heavier (it had to be beefed up to
make up for the loss of strength due to the holes). My Jubilee weighs
132 g. including the mounting bolt. The 80 g Huret Jubilee front
derailleur was too light for its own good. You had to shift carefully
or the cage would bend."
--p. 199-201
Here's another criticism of the Jubilee:
"Huret made the Jubilee front and rear derailleurs throughout this
decade [1975-1984]. They were the lightest derailleurs available. One
of Huret's problems through most of this decade was that their front
derailleurs and shift levers were worse than their rear derailleurs.
The Jubilee front derailleur was too flexible to shift positively."
--p. 242-3
Berto calls the SunTour Cyclone the best derailleur of the era, in
direct comparison to the Jubilee:
"SunTour did not price their products at what the traffic would bear:
Their policy was to set a 'fair' price by adding a markup to the
production cost. When a Campagnolo Nuovo Record or a Huret Jubilee
cost $40, and a Shimano Crane cost $20, the Cyclone cost $16. The
Nuovo Record and the Crane both weighed about 200 g (7 oz.), while the
Jubilee weighed 140 g (5 oz.). The 175 g (6 oz.) Cyclone was the
best-shifting derailleur on the market However, the result of
SunTour's pricing restraint was that their top derailleurs were found
on medium-priced bicycles, while their competitors' top derailleurs
were found on top-of-the-line bicycles."
--p. 255
Berto also criticizes the Jubilee's non-standard design:
"By the 1970s, Huret and Simplex had abandoned much of the
standardization that had benefitted the French bicycle industry in the
1940s and 1950s. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the derailleur
mounting on the rear dropout. If you bought a custom-built French
bicycle, the frame builder first had to decide on the derailleur, and
then select the dropout to match."
"A Huret Jubilee or a Challenger rear derailleur required the unique
Huret rear dropout, which had the angle adjustment tab at the 3
o'clock position. If your bicycle had one of these '[censored]' dropouts,
you had to use a Huret derailleur. . . ."
"Shimano and everyone else used the standard Campagnolo-pattern rear
dropout. Notice the angle adjustment tab at 7 o'clock."
--p. 201-202
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
