Originally Posted by
Miyata110
I get the feeling that the "Simplex sucks" sentiment is largely due to the agreed upon worthlessness of the FD, the RD simply becomes guilty by association.
I also suspect the RD's did not break as much as the FD's did, but there must have been a good enough reason why Simplex decided to reinforce their Delrin RD arms with some sheet metal covering on later RDs like the SX610s which are now known as great shifting and totally reliable RDs. So at least, Simplex did eventually wake up to do these improvements.
Also note that they also did not use any totally plastic main pivots on their later RDs.
Chombi