Alternative to Derailleur Design

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust.

Robust under what conditions? For commuter bikes, internally geared hubs
make a lot of sense.

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

The derailleur is itself a recently developed (and some of us fixed gear
freaks would say experimental) alternative to more robust designs.

You can get an idea of the timeline at:
http://www.ibike.org/library/historytimeline.htm

Dave Reckoning
Noblesville, Indiana

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

What are the other constraints? Does it have to be light? Efficient?
Inexpensive?

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

A couple, off the top of my head:
http://www.bsn.com/Cycling/articles/browning.html
http://www.classicrendezvous.com/USA/biocam.htm
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/rohloff.html
http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/Derailleur/product_20857.shtml

Not to be a killjoy, but I doubt you'll be able to come up with
anything original. I was looking at a Huret derailleur a couple days
ago on a 35-year-old Schwinn Varsity. It still shifted like new.

Jeff

JeffWills said:

Not to be a killjoy, but I doubt you'll be able to come up with
anything original. I was looking at a Huret derailleur a couple days
ago on a 35-year-old Schwinn Varsity. It still shifted like new.

Jeff

If it's an Alvit (I think that was the name) it's a piece of junk.
It just hasn't gotten gunked up yet. They don't shift to higher
gears very long after you start using them, even if disassembled
and cleaned.

The great breakthrough was the Sun Tour unintuitive slanted
parallelogram design, where the chain tension itself served
partially to push the thing back to higher gears.

--
Ron Hardin
[email hidden]

On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

Quoted message said:

any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great.

http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/bicycle_technology/

Sorry for being so vague. Ya it's for mountain biking so weight will
also be a factor aswell as efficiency. A very important constraint is
the price as at the moment, from what I can see, Rohloffs 14 speed hub
is the only real hub suited but at a ridiculous price (my opinion!).

Mark Hickey said:

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

What are the other constraints? Does it have to be light? Efficient?
Inexpensive?

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

IIRC, our correspondent PJ White has an alternative derailleur designed and
built.

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Sorry for being so vague. Ya it's for mountain biking so weight will
also be a factor aswell as efficiency. A very important constraint is
the price as at the moment, from what I can see, Rohloffs 14 speed hub
is the only real hub suited but at a ridiculous price (my opinion!).

Mark Hickey said:

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

What are the other constraints? Does it have to be light? Efficient?
Inexpensive?

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

The Dancing Chain:
History and Development of the Derailleur Bicycle
Frank Berto, Ron Shepherd, Raymond Henry
352 pages with 1,200 illustrations
8-1/2 x 11 inch hardcover
ISBN 1-892495-21-X, Library of Congress Catalog Number 99-71325

JeffWills said:

Quoted message said:

I'm doing a project to develop an alternative design to the derailleur
system with the main objective of it being more robust. I'm just
starting so at the moment I'm just seeing whats out there already or
any experimental designs. If anyone has any information or links, that
would be great. Thanks

A couple, off the top of my head:
http://www.bsn.com/Cycling/articles/browning.html

BEAST, from the people who brought you the Browning machine gun. A solid
marketing campaign plus actual availability of the system ought to have
been able to sell that in great numbers. The problem of the BEAST, if you
were to do it now, would be a) weight and b) reliability/availability of
parts (like new chainrings in those segments). At least the fragility of
the electronics and the short battery life are Solved Problems now (via
general electronics advances and advances in battery technology
respectively).

It's alleged to have been extremely good at shifting under power --
Downhillers might want it.

Quoted message said:

http://www.classicrendezvous.com/USA/biocam.htm

This one looks like the usual [censored].

Quoted message said:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/rohloff.html

<3.

Quoted message said:

http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/Derailleur/product_20857.shtml

I can't actually find what it does. Is it something like a push-pull
linkage operating the derailer position on rails, instead of the
parallelogram type?

Quoted message said:

Not to be a killjoy, but I doubt you'll be able to come up with
anything original. I was looking at a Huret derailleur a couple days
ago on a 35-year-old Schwinn Varsity. It still shifted like new.

Except it presumably didn't have a slant parallelogram, so it would be
nigh impossible to index. Or in other words, it didn't shift that well
when new either.

Jasper

Quoted message said:

A couple, off the top of my head:
http://www.bsn.com/Cycling/articles/browning.html
http://www.classicrendezvous.com/USA/biocam.htm
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/rohloff.html
http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/Derailleur/product_20857.shtml

really, those links were just off the top of your head. you have
amazing memory

Jasper Janssen said:

Quoted message said:

http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/Derailleur/product_20857.shtml

I can't actually find what it does. Is it something like a push-pull
linkage operating the derailer position on rails, instead of the
parallelogram type?

Quoted message said:

Jasper

Something like that. See below:

http://tinyurl.com/c2qbb

http://tinyurl.com/9rxvr

http://tinyurl.com/954qz

SYJ

StaceyJ said:

Jasper Janssen said:

Quoted message said:

http://www.mtbr.com/reviews/Derailleur/product_20857.shtml

I can't actually find what it does. Is it something like a push-pull
linkage operating the derailer position on rails, instead of the
parallelogram type?

Quoted message said:

Something like that. See below:

http://tinyurl.com/c2qbb
http://tinyurl.com/9rxvr
http://tinyurl.com/954qz

Thanks. That covers it fairly comprehensively. I note that the Rohloff has
almost exactly the same concept in the shifter: twist shifter with
push/pull cables.

I wonder if a derailleur made with that principle wouldn't still be a lot
more durable than slant-parallelogram and quite possibly cheaper. I guess
we'll see when the patent runs out if Shimano adopts it.

A problem mentioned in one of those links was function when muddied up.
Steel rods with plastic or brass bushings really don't work so great in
dirty environments, so you'd almost have to use it inside a chaincase.

Jasper

Jasper Janssen wrote:
<snip>

Quoted message said:

I wonder if a derailleur made with that principle wouldn't still be a lot
more durable than slant-parallelogram and quite possibly cheaper. I guess
we'll see when the patent runs out if Shimano adopts it.

Too late! Shimano *made* a derailleur like this- a parallelogram with
dual cables and indexing at the derailleur. This was the Positron,
version 1, sold in the middle-'70's. Positron II and Positron FH
followed, which used a solid piano-wire for a "cable" to allow the
shift lever to push as well as pull the derailleur cage:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/shimano1982/pages/36.html

They were of hefty all-steel construction. If you can find one, I'll
bet it still works.

Jeff