600 Arabesque arrived when the Japanese were still in the copy mode by what others had done, I felt it was a poor application overall of meaningless decoration.
(compare it to the styling of the Nuovo Record rear mech, and with that unit the decoration is mostly integral with the form)
The 600 Arabesque cranks did have a decent shape if you looked beyond the ornament.
It would not be until the DuraAce 7400 group and those after that Shimano visually stopped playing in the shadow.

Shimano was plenty innovative before 7400 with the AX versions of dura ace & 600.
Those groups failed completely in the marketplace but paved the way for the changes to come.

Who has a copy of The High Tech Bicycle printed around 1981 ?

The author predicted that Campy and others would eventually be surpassed because of their failure to innovate.

Well one of my bikes has Campagnolo NR and it works ok. The brakes are not very good either. I am currently re painting a 1981 Miyata 912 frame set that I picked up an Arabesque group set for. I guess I will find out how bad this group is as well. Thanks for the set up tips in this thread. Should help me out too.

...I forgot to mention that the current crop of brake shoes, with those little concave/convex washer setups, also help a lot in making these brakes work better.

I've run one bike with an arabesque RD. Always wanted to try it because it looks pretty sweet. I neither love nor hate it performance-wise, but it didn't remotely stack up against my Suntour experiences from the same era (Cyclone, V-GT Luxe) and seemed more temperamental than the NR on my Paramount (which I suppose is the nearest comparison).
In short, I don't think I'd actively seek it out again. But I wouldn't necessarily pull it off a bike that came equipped with it either.
How's that for some fence-straddling?

Of course, when I was making music I always felt that indifference was far worse than love or hate, so there's that too.
...Maybe I should just hit the 'post' button and be done with this one.

Campy Record side pulls seem to break alright for me.

Shimano Arabesque scroll-i-ques looked TACKY and when you looked at the stuff up close it looked CHEAP!

Aesthetically speaking, the Japanese love Kitch. They have the wondrous ability to take a classic design and evolve it into total dreck, e.g. to my tastes, the first generation DuraAce gruppo with the side pull brakes were a classic design especially in black (except for the brake levers and the faux DuraAce center pull brakes).

The beautiful look and... feel of the DuraAce down tube levers...




vs. this DRECK:





verktyg


Chas.

...OK, I guess maybe there is some hate for this stuff. Hey Chas, how do you feel about the Baroque period ?

[MENTION=348967]J.Oxley[/MENTION] et al

Well I like Vivaldi, does that count?


Japan was never party to western culture and tradition... (until after WWII). They lived in self imposed isolation until 1852-54, They never had to take on the Mongol hordes - Kamikaze, the divine wind took care of things for them - TWICE!

They never experienced the Battle of Tours (The Battle of Poitiers) in 732 when Charles "The Hammer" Martell took on 'Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi... (arabesque connection to this rant)

They were too busy slicing and dicing each other for over 2000 years.



Classical Japanese music, art, calligraphy, lacquer ware, bronze sculpture, samurai swords.. now those things are wonderful. Left to their own devices, modern Japanese culture would paint all of those things in gaudy DayGlo (neon - florescent) colors.




The Datsun 240Z was a classic design. In Japan it was called the Fair Lady Blue Bird because in Jinglish it sounded cool....


I don't hate... takes too much energy! Disdain? Disrespect? Dislike? Eh, still too much work...


Portrait of the artist as a young man...



I was in Japan in 1964 and 65 where I gained an appreciation of the culture!



verktyg

Chas.

Sums it up nicely.
There's an Arabesque 600 bike in the fleet that works fine since I replaced the long cage RD with a short one. There's also a Cyclone/Superbe bike that works better.
I should really open a can of worms and post an Arabesque crank with Biopace chainrings........

Top

Arabesque gets disrespected mainly because of the way it worked, which was inferior to Suntour. In fact, one can think of Arabesque as a metaphor for Shimano's market presence during the '70s through mid '80s - e.g. the company who had sales due to marketing muscle, smoke and mirrors.

As already mentioned - the RD wasn't slant parallelogram and lacked a b-screw. Brakes were mushy out of the box, requiring the modern C&V enthusiast to tweak to excess.

Nobody's talked about the absolutely-effing-stupid 6mm hex key attachment for the crank bolts. They had a pronounced tendency to strip under sufficient torque, and when the torque was not sufficient, they had a tendency to loosen up while riding. One required a proper spanner in order to remove the auto extract setup from the crank arms, which were about the only way to use normal bolts to attach the arms to the spindle.

Nice engraving, though. The shifters might not work as well as Simplex Retrofriction or Suntour ratcheting types, but what the hell, they're reminiscent of a nice turn-of-the-century Parker double shotgun or something.

had no problem with the allen key bolts for the crank arms. the "one-key release" dust caps are the only ones i've used that actually help keep the bolts in place, given proper fit with the included plastic washers.

besides my two univegas with arabesque, i've had two other bikes with these crank bolts and dust caps. both worked fine after i overhauled them. the caps can be difficult to remove on a bike that has sat unused for years.

Boy, I thought I was the one with the "hate issues" with Arabesque.

My Trek 736 performed so bad, I used to think it was haunted- until I got rid of most of all the Arabesque stuff on it. I'm not much of a "performance" oriented guy- just so that the stuff works decently, and honestly- if stuff works decently and looks cool, that's all I really want.

I think the rear derailleur looks really cool, I'm loathe to sell it because it looks so cool, but I've tried it on 3 different bikes and it's a no-go.




The brakes outright suck, I don't like the feel of the action of the shifters or the shifters themselves, I tried to leave the crankset, but found something way better- at this point the only Arabesque parts on the bike are the hubs- they're fine.


When [MENTION=348967]J.Oxley[/MENTION] was planning on building up his Arabesque RD, I tried to convince him otherwise... Friends don't let friends ride Arabesque.

The way I feel about Arabesque is the way I feel about the same period Dura-Ace. I have a DA on my voyageur, and the shifting performance in the rear is garbage. The single pivot dura ace brakes though...those were works of art.

Why anyone bought anything other than suntour 1984 and earlier is beyond me.

In an attempt at objectivity, the 600sis on my ironman was the best shifting group of all time.

The Datsun 240 Z though had its primary shape from the hands of Count Albrecht Goertz, ooops, not all by the Japanese.
Goertz had worked for Raymond Loewy previously.
That one does not count as a Japanese design in my book.

I think that zukahn1 hit the nail on the head in that the over-pricing of these parts today leads to performance expectations not to be met!

Yet, when evaluating old parts, it seems fair to use contemporary replacement bits like chain, pads and cables for a more-objective evaluation.

Starting with the brakes, yes they seem flexy, and have the cable on the wrong side of the calipers, like so many DiaCompe and Weinmann calipers also do. With modern cabling and well-chosen modern pads that dn't require a lot of toe-in, these brakes are passable imo.

The crankset is light and looks nice, but is on the flexy side as one might predict by looking at the dimensions.
The chainrings have the useful, patented W-CUT features of pairs of shortened teeth for faster, more-assertive shifting action.
The 6mm self-extractors caused real problems though, both with installation and removal. One should always apply weighting to the pedals, then turn the cranks 180-degrees and weight them again repeatedly during both the tightening process and the loosening process, between "rounds" of bolt tightening or loosening. This will settle the tapers fully using a lower torque value, and will also extract the arms without stripping the hex or possibly pulling out the extractor threads. All this adds to the assembly and servicing labor.

The hubs were excellent, but the freehub versions were faulty. Many of the hubs (also the "Model 60" version that so often was paired with the 600 parts) developed a failure of the attachment of the inner freehub body to the snout on the hubshell, which did not affect the performance but which made the cone adjustment process maddening, since there was added rocking freeplay to factor into the equation. Dura-Ace model freehubs from this period threaded the steel inner freehub body directly into the hubshell, avoiding this problem.

The front derailer was pretty normal. The rear derailer had a near-identical actuation ratio to Suntour and to even the later Dura-Ace SIS rear derailers. The "B-Tension" positioning was pre-set so as to handle at least a 28t cog, so the chain gap was large when used with smaller freewheels. One can disassemble either of the body pivots, A or B, and drill a new hole for the end of the spring. Depending on which spring, and depending on the position of the new hole, the body angle can be finely adjusted. Simplex also used dual-sprung derailers which conveniently added a locknut to the cage pivot attachment, so external adjustment was possible with their version!
I have more than once noted a big improvement in shifting when the Arabesque rear derailer was replaced with a 1st-version 600 SIS unit. The later model featured the first-time use of a lower actuation ratio for Shimano, so the lever movement increases noticeably and shifting feels more forgiving. The newer 600 derailer also had a variety of other detail improvements that even the "New 600EX" derailer did not have.

I was nearly sickened by the looks of these parts when Shimano rolled them out, but nowadays I see them as they are and, like another poster, I tend to collect the cranksets (the majority of which featured a one-piece crankarm/spider, ...some were two-piece btw).

So cool-looking, $6 at the co-op, and no personal experience with it. Had to give it a shot.

Dandy.. Just dandy..

It works well for me. Well enough to where I refuse to say it looks cheap, shifts like crap, or the brakes are mushy. This is one of my favorite bikes.,,,BD

Fiddle-dee-dee. If it ain't Baroque, can you fix it?

I had a 600EX long-cage rear derailleur on a bike for a while. The "hatch-plate" mechanism and minimalist inside cage allowed the chain to jump off and spin the lower piece of the cage around. It did this to me a couple times before I tossed it in the trash and replaced it with a SunTour.

I like newer Shimano stuff a lot. Early '80's Shmano? Not so much.

1982 Shimano Catalogue Page 23

my first suntour cyclone rear derailleur didn't work well. i changed the freewheel and chain, and it still didn't work well.

instead of starting a thread about how poorly suntour made derailleurs, i just bought another cyclone derailleur, and it worked fine.

verktyg

Chas.

In 1984 the Simplex Delrin was far less common than in 1970 (most had broken?), and even Simplex was bringing out aluminum parts. In 1984 the 600 Arabesque had morphed into the smooth and sleek 600EX, marked 6207 on the back rather than 6200. My '84 Trek 610 came with that one, and I never liked it. Now I'm using the rear mech and the crankset on a UO-8. It's not bad on there, but I don't expect any good rear shifting. The derailleur was not better than what else was around, due to the Sun-Tour design and Campy NR and SR for narrower gear spreads. But I lived with all that, and it's just fine on the UO-8.

What I really didn't like were the side pulls and the cheap levers - way too much flex and poor braking. I replaced my uncomfortable levers with a set of final-markdown Modolos, and the flexy Shimano cables with a set of Modolo (or Campy?) cables with super-thick inner cables. I filed the ends of the outer cables to be truly square so they would with stand compression without bending and twisting. The squish was nearly gone after all this except for the caliper flex which was a lot more than the Campy side pulls of the '70s. A pad replacement with salmon Kool-Stops improved braking power, and I use this setup to this day, at least in the back.

I don't have hate for early '80s Shimano, but I have not-all-good experience.

Oh yeah, my '86ish Mondonico came with 6207, as well. Original buyer of the frame was a grad student who wanted to race. So I've had it on two bikes bitd.

I'm still using the downtube shift levers and the front mech. Those are quite nice.

Overall pretty stuff, but not all of it was very functional.

Yes, I read that. Looking at Campy today, it seems they have again learned how to innovate while keeping their heritage.