fixitsteve

My bike is a 1970 Concord (Japan)Deluxe 10speed road bike. Santa got it for me when I was 14. The rear derailleur, titlist GS, is wearing out. Should I look for a used replacement or is there a better new brand to use. Or what would be a good upgrade for the complete driveline. thanks, Steve

JohnDThompson 

A modern derailleur can be used with vintage friction shifting, and will give you the performance advantage of a slant parallelogram combined with a sprung upper pivot. One caveat is that if the derailleur is designed for an excessively large number of rear sprockets (say, nine or more), you may need to replace one of the limit bolts with a longer bolt to keep the derailleur out of the spokes.

The Golden Boy 

There's a LOT of things you can do with the bike.

If you just want to replace the derailleur- you can find another Titlist. The upgraded version would be the Crane GS.

I think I would not recommend throwing a lot of money at the bike until you figure out what you want out of the bike and what other bike parts will do what you want.

In other words- people can recommend a whole modern setup on your bike- next thing you know you've dumped $5000 into your bike. Even with vintage parts- there are a lot of things that "if you do this, you have to replace *this*" and that gets expensive, and exhausting- especially if you don't know what you're headed into.

Do a whole lot of reading and looking at pictures of people's bikes, and see what looks cool to you and what you think your bike would like. Then I'd see if it's feasible and affordable...

IMO, IME and all that. (not that I've ever thrown thousands of dollars at a bike frame...)

T-Mar

Welcome to the forum. Before you replace the derailleur, what makes you think it is worn out? A lot of issues that owners perceive to be rear derailleur related can often be traced to other drivetrain items. Normally, the highest wear occurs on the cage pulleys and they're easily replaced. So, if they're in good condition, there's a good probability that any issue lies elsewhere. The Titlist was a decent performing, mid-range rear derailleur in its day. There's no reason to replace it, unless there's a real issue.

fixitsteve

Looking from the rear, the cage pulleys do not line up with the freewheel gear set. All of the pivot points in the derailleur have some play. It shifts ok for now but would like to fix it before it becomes a problem.
Not looking to dump lots of money into it. It has been MY BIKE for over 50 years and just enjoy riding it and keeping it working.

52telecaster

You might need to align your derailleur dropout. There are special tools for this or you can do a nice approximation with a spare rear wheel. It won't tighten up your pivots but it will get the derailleur cage parallel to the rear wheel.

davester

Misalignment of the pulley cage is often the result of a bent derailleur hanger or dropout, not a worn/damaged derailleur. If so, this is generally fixed by bending the hanger/dropout; replacing the derailleur will not help you in this case. You should carefully check to see if it is the derailleur that appears bent or the hanger. There are tools for doing this, but you can probably eyeball it. You can then straighten the dropout after removing the derailleur by bending it with a crescent wrench. A derailleur cage can often be straightened by similar means.

The Titleist is a pretty high end derailleur (it's identical to the Crane except for the steel cage), so I'm surprised that it has developed excess play in the pivots. However, if so then you should probably look for a replacement as you are doing. If it were me, I'd probably look for a used Crane, or Suntour V series or Cyclone as a good replacement. That'll be cheaper and prettier than buying a modern derailleur which might be problematic given the need to reduce the range.

fixitsteve

Thanks for all the advice. I found a used TitlistGS on ebay. It does not have the play mine did and everything lines up much nicer. I also replaced the freewheel with a interloc racing design(could not find shimano), if I pushed it hard in high gear it would skip. Ready to ride it another 50 years.