At some point (too much travel) I will post the NOS International photos, it is very nice and I got it from the gentleman who showed it at Continental Cyclery in Wichita KS (hanging on wall since 90s I believe--they put it together then out of the box). There is a photo on their site on their Heritage page. As I rework it (20 year old grease and dust) I hope to do a thread on it.

I am talking about reducing the tension in the parallelogram spring, not the cage spring. I simply removed it and mounted it to a board and relieved some tension (carefully pushed on it, lots of small tries).

I found that spring to be so strong it required the shifter to be locked down so tight there was absolutely no feel in the movement of the lever, now I can feel the shift in the handle of the lever--sort of that feeling on a Suntour PowerShift when you get on top of the back cog it sort of relaxes when you are there, not sure how to describe it actually, but it made a world of difference.

The OP probably has a too long bolt, but I think this contributes as he talked about the difference between the earlier RD he had on there.