Odd RD Placement
 

So a good friend of mine recently traded for this Fisher at our Co op (his 2nd Pre-Trek Fisher, lucky bum!). He plans on making it his commuter. He is trying to get a set of Suntour Command shifters to work right, which I think at least part of his problem is that the RD is placed on the chain stay. Looks like he could move it if he wanted to, but he is a fan of oddities.

Not necessarily looking for advice, unless you have some to give, more so wanted to share this pic of something I have not seen before. Sorry, no picture of the full bike at the moment.

http://i1372.photobucket.com/albums/...psvbn0gr3o.jpg

Interesting, there was a pic of this RD placement not to long ago. Whose I do not remember. Early 90's time frame for this set up I seem to remember...

Thanks for sharing. Yes, your buddy is lucky on the Gary F snags !

Interesting. That's a new one on me.

Cool, I have never seen that before (other than really really old pre parallelogram derailleurs).

There definitely was another thread about this little oddity recently. Is this the one that's indexed in the derailleur itself? So any old friction shifter becomes indexed when connected?

The idea is solid, like the Nivex/Cyclo RDs of old: Mount the RD under the chainstay, so that it doesn't stick out as much. Less chance of damaging it in a crash. Too bad SunTour was on their way out at the time they came up with this.

That' a good question! It also could be why he is having some issues (I think the command shifters were indexed??)

This usually comes up when someone scores an old Schwinn CrissCross on CL:

http://i1238.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5jcwhqgn.jpg

That's SunTour's take on the old Nivex design:

https://janheine.files.wordpress.com...ingernivex.jpg

Jan Heine of "Bicycle Quarterly" has a special fondness for the Nivex:

https://janheine.wordpress.com/2012/...-going-strong/

That is one very contrarian bike, no wonder it appeals to him

We're all a little contrarian here in C&V, aren't we? Otherwise, we'd be riding the latest matte-black carbon fiber bikes, and maybe not even wasting time on the Internet talking about them. ;)

It does make me wonder about the use of solid plates and not bent tubes for derailleur cages and other components.

How in blue blazes are you supposed to see that pretty tail light?

edit...oops wrong chainstay (sheepish grin emoticon)

I hadn't heard of another bike besides the Schwinn CrissCross using this RD design.
I used a CrissCross with one of the chainstays RDs this summer for an around town bike and likes it a lot. It's lower-mid level SunTour components, but they shifted perfectly fine.

Surprised it won't shift well with Accushift Command shifters. It was a neat design since it hid the RD and kept isn't from being knocked around as much as a traditional placement.

Good info here: SunTour S-1 derailleur (S100)