Philphine

rapid rise?
reverse pull?

I'm reading different terms for them. hopefully someone will recognize one of them.


playing with a project and would like to find one. I know they made short cage front ones from the old ten speed days, but I'd like to find a long cage one to control a triple front chain ring if they were ever made.


not concerned about the seat tube size. I just need enough post to hold the derailleur so i'll weld on whatever size matches it. if it turns out they were made but only as a braze on I'm still interested. i'll just need to figure out how to make it work for me.


so, I just need to know if long cage ones were ever made, or if I'm wasting time looking for something that doesn't exist. thanks.

Davet

'Rapid rise' refers to rear derailleurs, along the terms 'short cage' and 'long cage' not front derailleurs. If you're looking for a front derailleur for a triple, that's exactly what you ask for.

cny-bikeman

Front derailleurs that operated in reverse of the normal direction (pull on the lever, derailleur moves in, push moves out) did not operate very well on the shift to the larger ring, depending as they did only on spring tension to make that more difficult shift. I don't know that they had any function other than making both levers consistent - pulling back always went to a lower gear, pushing to a higher one. I don't know of a front derailleur that is made that way currently, and certainly would not recommend it for a triple. Also, if you have levers with a trim function it would work in reverse.

Bill Kapaun

Terms High Normal & Low Normal are/were used for FDER's, depending if the the default position was on the large or small ring.
As mentioned, I don't think anybody makes a High Normal anymore.
I beleieve they went out of fashion about the time indexed shifting evolved and the demise of Suntour.

Philphine

I found one on ebay, but it was short, for a ten speed.


shifter consistency is what I'm wanting, only in reverse. sorta.


it's a chopper project, with the front shifter turned backward because they are in a sort of jockey position. I remember not liking how the reverse front derailleur worked back then, when I rode a bike with one, but I figured for this, it would feel normal.


but if they were never made for a triple there's no use searching I guess. that's what I needed to know before I went ahead and got a normal one. thanks for the help.

Bill Kapaun

Again, cage LENGTH is NOT a term used with FDER's. Only RDER's.

ramzilla

Make sure the front derailleur you choose has an outer arm radius that matches the radius of the large ring. ......High normal was a Suntour feature found on many Fuji's and other Suntour equipped bikes in the 70's and 80's. When lever & cable tension is released the derailleur spring returns to the high ring gear. It's exactly the opposite of everything made over the last 30 years or so.

fietsbob

+1) Way Back in the 80's Sun Tour had a High Normal Front derailleur..
I thought they were useful on Touring Bikes* with triples, because the insistant force of the cable
pulled you into the Hill climbing Gear .

But the Powers that Be in Manufacturing and selling parts had Other preferences .

They Made them out of 2 pieces, a outer plate of aluminum an inner one of steel,
so they were not really designed to Last. which they didn't.


* Because that is My Cycling focus..



./.

SkyDog75

The SunTour Spirt and Compe-V were high-normal front derailleurs. Both are plentiful and cheap on eBay. I have them on a couple of bikes and they've worked flawlessly for me.

As for cage length... The length of a front derailleur's cage is a factor that affects a derailleur's capacity, or the difference in chainring sizes it can handle, which is typically expressed as a number of teeth. The Compe-V came in two different versions, one with five holes on the cage and one with six. Velobase says the five-hole version has a capacity of 18 teeth, so it could potentially handle a narrowly-geared triple. I haven't found a listing for the six-hole version, but it looks like the cage is shaped a little different, so perhaps it could handle a few more teeth.

I've seen references to at least one other SunTour high normal front derailleur, an XC model, and maybe that's the partially-aluminum one fietsbob is referring to. The cages on the Spirt and the Compe-V are completely steel.