Originally Posted by
cyclotoine
If you search this forum you will find that I attach 600 again and again and again. I hate the stamped parallelogram plates and the blatant flop of an attempt to appeal to the cache of nuovo record. It's also a straight parallogram so for touring the performance is not competitive with suntour.
I love the 600 Arabesque group and all of it's respective components except the rear derailleur... the springs are weak and wear prematurely and it is primitive compared to the Suntour derailleurs that it was supposed to have been competing against.
There is no comparison between a V series Suntour and the 600 Arabesque when it comes to design, build quality, and shifting proficiency.
Mind you, no-one else made a friction derailleur as well as Suntour and once they sorted out their indexing issues their groups were every but as good as Shimano but it was already too late as they failed to outsource production and their production costs rendered them non competitive in the OEM market.