Thanks for the pics... see what I mean.

i agree that they're huret based on the fact that my shifters are not stamped. this would also make sense since the guy i bought them from had two gitanes in his garage, and, while i'm no expert (especially on french parts) i think gitanes came with huret stuff? i wonder if the mistake was deliberate?

They are the same. Chances are, Simplex dropped the engraving later on in the production run (or, for that matter, earlier), and the non-marked ones you show in the photo there had Huret covers shoved onto it due to the original Simplex hoods having cracked (all too common), and consequently, being mistaken for Huret.

I've had one of these shifters without any engraving - that same non-engraved shifter had a severely cracked Simplex hood on it.

-Kurtr

Your certainty is admirable. As long as we're speculating, the reverse is also a possibility; someone stuck a Simplex cover on your Huret lever. Either way, Huret did make a bar end shifter and the pic that Sizzle found supports my recollection... feeble as it might be.

If Huret did market a shifter like that, I'd be mighty surprised that they were made as an identical Simplex copy - unless Simplex made these shifters for Huret.

Do you have any other photos of Huret bar-con shifters? I suspect that the examples shown are being mistaken for the Hurets.

-Kurt

That is a definite possibility. Until this thread, I hadn't really noticed the resemblance.

here's a link to the page where i found the pictures. guy has a lot of neat stuff. even had a rare sturmey-archer 2 gear fixed gear hub, but sold it for 500$. as for the differences between huret and simplex, due to the fact that both shifters pictured are almost identical, we can all agree that they were either manufactured by the same company or someone mislabled them. i don't think we can be 100% sure either way.

http://www.bikeville.com/derailleur.html

Well, Bikeville is full of it, for a fact - I wouldn't particularly take anything on their page as gospel.

On another note, I was able to find a catalogue of Huret's 1970 derailer lineup in The Dancing Chain, 2nd Ed. (surprise, surprise - that publication is near worthless as a good, solid reference book for the most part), and sure enough, there's a nice little sketch of the Huret barcon, identical to the Simplex. As to be expected, there is no mention of the Simplex lever, or photos of any other bar-con until the Suntour era.

I guess the only question remains: Who made it for who?

-Kurt

you
outre
uranian cattle punching sniveler

are like
runny
ectoplasm

an untidy wetness
not to be confused with

a bee or many other
somnolent
simians are wont to do...