Today, I took apart, cleaned up and reassembles an old SunTour Superbe 5300 derailleur (c. 1984), and I noticed something quite odd...to me anyway. It doesn't have a barrel adjuster, and a standard (modern) ferrule doesn't fit...Is there a piece that I am missing?

I am working on a 1985 Team Fuji and so far, I pretty much spent a good part of the afternoon cleaning, polishing, greasing up parts to get them in working order, but went to cable it up to check operation and came across this little hindrance. This is my first classic/vintage restore, not a perfect one, but will make a good daily ride...

Not all derailleurs had barrel adjusters. and this one doesn't. The trick is to stretch the cable first, then get the stops adjusted, then pull the cable taught with a third hand tool to the point that you tighten the cable just before the derailleur moves.

IRD makes a barrel adjuster for derailleurs that don't come with them. I need two of these for my long cage Superbe Pros on my C'dale ST800s.

Barrel Adjuster for Rear Derailleurs ? Interloc Racing Design / IRD

Was Superbe indexed at that time? If not, barrel adjuster is not needed.

What's funny is that the 1984 Suntour AR (towards the bottom of the lineup) was all friction but had a barrel adjuster!

I would guess that the lack of a barrel adjuster would have accounted for in excess of 5 grams of weight savings.

SunTour was odd in putting barrel adjuster on their rear derailleurs long before they became necessary with indexed shifting. Even the old "GT" from the 1970s had a barrel adjuster:



But they didn't appear on all their derailleurs, for reasons that are lost to history.

I ran into this problem with the Superbe Pro I have. It does not have an adjuster. I learned that the last generation of the Pro RD does. I came up with an in-line adjuster that I am not happy with. The IRD looks very nice.

The discovery was made when I was in the process of building a Pinarello Tre Cime for my daughter to use. Not having an adjuster was a bit problematic. I used the method [MENTION=157963]canopus[/MENTION] suggested in post #2 . It worked flawlessly with the index DT shifters. Prior to the pic I installed an adjuster that has a very small range. The bike needs to be painted, but that is another thread.

[IMG]Pinarello Tre Cime, on Flickr[/IMG]

Mine did not have a barrel adjuster and had a special ferrule in the end that was narrower...wide on the cable side, then narrow on the derailleur side. I still have another cable like that somewhere. I'll look for it and take photo.

And I found it but the picture uploaded doesn't seem to be working for me at the moment.

Agreed. I had a V-Luxe with a barrel adjuster on a Lejeune at one time. I was able to index it with a GPX shifter on an ulta 6.

That's interesting- I'd never known you could index on an ultra spaced freewheel...

I never tried- but now you mention it, I think I'm going to go mess with some stuff...

Here is the cable I had on mine.