The Dura Ace 7800 FD was having an outrageously difficult time picking up the chain and moving it to the big chainring. Somewhere I once read that the front derailleur is the most non-essential component on a bike. You can use a stick or even your finger to move the chain. But this FD couldn't do that. To be fair, it's meant to work with a very specific crank/chainring set with ramped and pinned rings, probably narrower rings, probably spaced closer together.

So I've been trying to decide what FD to use... I could use the Z206- that worked fine, it was used on a couple of model years of the Schwinn Voyageur... but it sort of lacks something... I have a pretty decent collection of FDs, most of what I have is Suntour.





I was leaning towards the Mountech- IMO one of the finest FDs of all time. After asking a bunch of opinions from people- I came to the Cyclone MII. It's a great derailleur, it works impeccably, and it looks a bit more modern than the Mountech. I was still having a hard time with this because I was looking at this as replacing a Dura Ace unit with a Suntour-pairing Dura Ace with Suntour. And then Pastor Bob brought up the fact I'm using Suntour Shifters. Suddenly I was totally fine with the Cyclone!