The Best Kind Of "Retro": Simplex "Teardrop" Shifters

Yesterday I wrote about what may have been the most jewel-like bicycle component I ever rode:  the Huret Jubilee rear derailleur.

Today I'm going to write about the part that might be a close second in the beauty contest.  I mentioned them in yesterday's post:  Simplex "retrofriction" levers--in particular, the "teardrop"-shaped ones. 

Most retrofriction levers in that shape were made to fit brazed-on lever bosses. I rode with those levers on several of my bicycles, including the Colnago Arabesque and Miyata 912.  The levers were also available in other configurations, including a "coke spoon" version made for Gipiemme.  

Simplex also made the levers in other shapes and colors for Mavic, Galli and other component manufacturers.  And, of course, there was the original version, which was usually attached to a clamp but was also available to fit braze-ons:

Although they all functioned in the same way, the Gipiemmes might have offered the best hand-feel.  (I am only guessing, as I never tried them myself.)  But whatever their shape, they offered the smoothest action of any lever I've ever used.  That is because they had a spring-clutch mechanism on the inside that kept the lever from slipping (and, thus, the derailleur from shifting accidentally) but allowed a shift with a lighter touch than was needed for other levers.  

Campagnolo and other friction levers, on the other hand, relied on nylon bushings and D-shaped screws to hold them in place--which made them more balky to shift.   The ratcheted SunTour levers were like Simplex's retrofrictions in that they,too, stayed in place when they weren't shifted but were easy to shift.  However, they had a clunkier feel and it was a bit harder to fine-tune shifts on them in much the same way that a one-bolt seatpost with notches is more difficult to adjust to exactly the right seat angle than one without notches, or a two-bolt post.

So, SunTour's "power" shifters tended (at least in my experience) to work better with wide-range slant-pantogaph derailleurs on which only the lower pivot was sprung like the SunTour's VGT or Cyclone GT.  On the other hand, Simplex's more nuanced action seemed to work well with just about every derailleur, with narrow-range racing or wide-range touring gears.  But they seemed especially well-suited to derailleurs that required smaller amounts of cable travel, such as the SunTour Cyclone S and Superbe, Campagnolo Record--and, of course, the Simplex Super LJ.

And, oh, yes, the Huret Jubilee.  It and the retrofriction levers seemed to go together like croissants and coffee.  The original Jubilee levers were made with a large drum that pulled too much cable for the Jubilee, which caused it to overshift.  Later, Huret made a lever with a smaller drum that was intended for both the Jubilee and the titanium Success rear derailleur.  But Huret's lever operated on friction, so Simplex's shifter was smoother.

If I were going to set up a bike with friction shifting, I'd definitely want the retrofriction levers.  However, that would mean using no more than seven cogs in the rear:  what made them so pleasant to use with derailleurs like the Jubilee is the small drum, which cuts down on the amount of cable the levers can wrap up.   In other words, even pulling the lever all the way back probably won't get it to shift onto an 8th cog.  (At least, it didn't on my bikes.)

But, of course, if I wanted to choose components purely on aesthetics, I would choose the Simplex retrofriction levers--and Huret Jubilee rear derailleur.

50 Years Ago This Month: The Dawn Of SunTour

What is the most influential and important development in the history of the bicycle?

Some would say, well, duh, it's the invention of the bicycle. I might agree, except that it's hard to pinpoint when, exactly, the bicycle was "invented".  Is Leonardo da Vinci responsible for it?   Or, do you consider the "celerifere" the first in the line of two-wheeled vehicles we love to ride to day?  Some might say Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun, who attached a steering device to his two-wheeler, is the progenitor of our pleasures.  Then again, others would have us believe that it wasn't really a bicycle until Kirkpatrick MacMillan attached foot pedals to it.

After the invention of the bicycle, however you define it, probably the most important development--and certainly the one most influential beyond the world of cycling--is that of the pneumatic tire.  Without it, not only bicycles, but also motor vehicles, would give slower and bumpier rides than wooden- or metal-wheeled horse-drawn carriages.  And modern passenger aircraft could not take off or land.

Possibly the next-most important development is the invention of the "safety" bicycle.  It's what we (well, most of us, anyway) ride today:  two wheels the same size (or close to it), foot pedals and a front chain that drives a rear cog via a chain.  This type of bicycle replaced the high-wheeler or "penny farthing" bikes, on which the pedals and cranks were attached to the front wheel axle.  The gear ratio was, therefore, dependent on the size of the front wheel:  Common diameters were 60 and 72 inches.  On the "safety" bicycle, variable gears were possible.

Variable gears led to inventors coming up with various ways to use them, the most common of which are variable-gear internal hubs (e.g., the Sturmey-Archer three-speed hubs found on classic English bikes) and derailleurs.

About the latter:  The patent for what is, arguably, the most important innovation in derailleur design was filed fifty years ago this month in Japan, and a month later in the US.

Here we can see it advertised in the December 1964 edition of New Cycling magazine:

It's the SunTour Gran-Prix derailleur, the progenitor of every single derailleur with even the slightest pretense of quality made during the past few decades.


This brainchild of Nobuo Ozaki, SunTour's chief engineer at the time, the SunTour Gran-Prix introduced the "slant parallelogram" design to the world.  The derailleur's main parallelogram is more or less parallel to the chainstay, in contrast to those of Campagnolo and Simplex derailleurs, which dropped straight down from the frame mount and were almost perpendicular to the ground--or those of Huret derailleurs, which consisted of flat steel plates that pivoted on the mounting plate.

Such a difference is not merely stylistic:  It allowed the top pulley of the Grand-Prix to run as close to the smallest cog as it did to the largest, or any in between.  Shifting thus became easier and more precise, especially on wide-range touring gears.  People were amazed at the difference when they replaced their malfunctioning or broken Huret Luxes,  Campagnolo Gran Turismos or Simplex Prestiges with something from SunTour.  I know I was.

Without a way of keeping a constant distance between the derailleur pulley and the rear cogs, it's all but impossible to make any sort of indexed derailleur system work reliably.  Ironically, this fact would lead  Shimano and Campagnolo (and, later, SRAM) to claim supremacy over the market SunTour would dominate from the mid-1970's until the mid-1980s--and, ultimately, to SunTour's demise.

Practically the second SunTour's patent expired in 1984, Campy and Shimano (and Sachs-Huret, which would become part of SRAM) seized upon it.  The following year, Shimano introduced SIS, the first commercially successful indexed derailleur shifting system.  The rear derailleur from that system combined SunTour's slant parallelogram with the spring-loaded top pivot Shimano (as well as Simplex) had already been using in their derailleurs.

Notice that I said SIS was the first commercially-successful indexed derailleur system.  It wasn't the first indexed system:  The idea was tried as far back as the 1930's (the "Funiculo" derailleur on Jacques Schulz bicycles), and in 1969 SunTour introduced an indexed system that, by all accounts, worked well. 

Had SunTour waited a couple more years to market that system, they might have dominated the bicycle components industry even more they did in the 1970s, and they still might be in business today.  However, the "Honor" and GT derailleurs-- refinements of the Grand-Prix--and the "V" series were introduced just as the '70's Bike Boom was starting in North America.  New cyclists (like yours truly) in the New World had no previous brand loyalty, if you will, to any of the established European derailleur makers and were more willing to try something that looked (and, more important, worked) differently.

Interestingly, this led to a reversal of an old dynamic:  A few years later, European cyclists (some, anyway) would take the lead of their American counterparts and start using SunTour (and, later, Shimano) derailleurs and other parts. 

Anyway...After Shimano introduced their indexed system in 1985, other companies--including SunTour and Campagnolo-- panicked and introduced their own systems. Some of us referred to Campy's "Syncros" system as "Stinkros".  SunTour's system shifted a little better, but not as well as Shimano's, which consisted of a more closely-integrated set of components.  Essentially, Shimano designed a whole new system, while SunTour and Campagnolo simply created new indexed shift levers that were supposed to work with derailleurs and freewheels those companies were already making.

What made matters worse was that bike manufacturers, like Schwinn, equipped some of their models with SunTour's indexed shifters but used them with freewheels, chains and cables--some of which weren't even made by SunTour--they already had on hand.  It almost goes without saying that the results ranged from underwhelming to disastrous.

(Also, the fact that Schwinn's reputation was already slipping didn't help to bolster confidence in the components they used on their bikes.  That's my opinion, anyway.)

SunTour finally redesigned their indexed systems, but it was too late.  The company managed to hang on until 1995.  By then, nearly all bikes of any quality had Shimano derailleurs--which had the same geometry as the SunTour derailleurs Nobuo Ozaki created three decades earlier!

(He was, apparently,  much better at industrial design and engineering than anyone in the company was at translating.  One of their early manuals, useful as it is, tells us "How To Use Honor Rightly".)

It Made Our Bikes Possible

We have all had our life-changing moments, for better and worse: the first kiss, finding out that a hero or role model was merely mortal, tasting an unfamiliar food and liking (or disliking) it more than we expected, or doubting something that had always been believed or assumed.

I'm not going to tell you that I've had such a life-changing moment today, or within the past week or month.  But I got to thinking about those revelations or epiphanies or whatever you want to call them in our cycling lives.

Some of us experience such a moment upon riding a bike with dropped bars or a hard leather saddle and discovering it is actually comfortable--or, at least, not as uncomfortable as we expected.  Or it can come when we try a new genre of riding or type of bike:  For example, I never expected to fall in love with fixed-gear riding.  Conversely, some of us might learn that we do not have the time, resources or talent to become the racers we hoped to be--or that age or other changes in our bodies might mandate changes in the way we ride.

And then there are the seemingly-smaller, but nonetheless influential experiences that cause us to see some aspect of our cycling in a different way.

If you came of age during the 1970's (as a cyclist, anyway), one such experience could have come after you'd spent some time riding a typical bike from that era, which came equipped with Huret or Simplex derailleur--or the Campagnolo Valentino or Gran Turismo. Perhaps the derailleur broke, wore out or rusted solid (a common occurrence with Huret derailleurs in rainy climates).  Or you got to ride a friend's bike, or test-ride one in a shop.

Your friend's bike, or the one you test-rode, might have been equipped with the same derailleur your shop mechanic installed (or recommended, if you did your own work) when your Simplex, Huret or Campy died.  That derailleur was the Sun Tour GT--or, later, the VGT.

Sun Tour V-T Luxe Derailleur, ca. 1974.  From Disraeli Gears

To this day, I don't think I've ever ridden any other bike part that seemed so far superior to its counterparts.  Some people have described feeling that way about using an Apple computer after years of working on machines equipped with Microsoft.  Since I haven't used Apple, I can't vouch for its superiority.  However, I can assure you that the difference between Sun Tour derailleurs and anything else made during the 1970's was at least as great.

From what I understand, Apple is influencing changes in the design of other computers and electronic devices and that, in the near future, I might be using something with their imprint whether or not it's my intention.  

In a similar fashion, even though SunTour went out of business around 1995 (though its name is still licensed for bike parts marketed in Europe and other parts of the world), nearly all of us are riding a SunTour derailleur, if you will.  If you're riding any derailleur that clicks when you shift it, the mechanism will have a geometry very similar to, if not exactly the same as, a SunTour V-series (V, VT, V-GT, Vx, Vx-GT) from the 1970's.  Yes, even arch-rival Shimano adopted it for all but its least expensive rear derailleurs.  

In fact, Shimano's first SIS series of integrated derailleurs, shifters, cogs and chains came out in 1985--the year after SunTour's 1964 patent on the slant-parallelogram derailleur expired.  Shimano had made earlier, unsuccessful attempts at creating an indexed ("click-shift") derailleur system.  Turns out, they needed Sun Tour's slant parallelogram to make it work.

Ironically, when SunTour made its own indexed system a couple of years later, it didn't work as well as Shimano's.  The same was true of Campagnolo's first attempt at such a system:  the Synchro, which some of us called the "Stinkro".  SunTour and Campy both made the same mistake:  They simply retro-fitted an indexed ring to shifters they already made and didn't integrate it with the other parts.   

Campagnolo survived its mistake only because its more traditional Record (the Nuovo, Super and C- series) were still widely used in elite pelotons such as those of le Tour, il Giro and la Vuelta.  As good as SunTour's earlier equipment was, it was still almost unknown in those circles and, costing much less than Campy's stuff, didn't have snob appeal.  

People who started riding during the mid-90's or later have probably never heard of SunTour. But that once-proud derailleur maker made the bikes most of them ride possible--and changed our cycling world.

A Derailleur I Don't Miss

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I don't do "retro" for the sake of being retro.  I like the ride of high-quality steel frames, and like the look of lugs.  I also like leather saddles and canvas bags, for looks as well as comfort (in the case of saddles) and durability (the bags).  Also, I appreciate the craft that goes into many of those items.

There are some "old-school" parts I really like, too.  As an example, I probably will ride cranks with square-taper bottom bracket axles for as long as they're available. (I went through eight ISIS bottom brackets in the three years I rode a crankset made for them!)   And, I like Lyotard-style platform pedals with toe clips and straps because they don't require the use of special shoes or cleats--and, frankly, they're better-made than most clipless pedals.  (For a time, I was replacing my clipless pedals every year, even if I didn't crash them.)  And, although I've ridden some of the exotic pre-made wheelsets, and owned a couple of pairs, I prefer handbuilt wheels with traditional (not straight-pull) spokes.

On the other hand, I don't understand the fascination with some "old-school" stuff, save for collectors and people who want to do "period" restorations.  

Here is an example of what I mean.  The other day, this derailleur ensemble sold for 170 dollars on eBay.  Granted, it is in New Old Stock (NOS) condition, meaning it had been sitting in some box or drawer for the past forty years.  

While these parts aren't as common as they once were, they haven't exactly disappeared from the planet, either.  The pieces of the ensemble were made by Huret. The shifters and front derailleurs were decent: not as good as Campagnolo's best or almost anything SunTour ever made, but competent enough, especially in their time.  However, there was no excuse for the rear derailleur, even when it came out.

The Huret Luxe Super Touring rear derailleur was scary.  When you rode it, I mean.  It shifted with all of the predictability of Lady Gaga's sartorial choices.  To be fair, the same could be said for most wide-range touring derailleurs of that time (circa 1972) that weren't made by SunTour.  The Campagnolo Gran Turismo didn't shift much better than the Huret.  But at least the Campy GT shared a trait of other Campagnolo derailleurs at that time.  Frank Berto best described that characteristic when he said, of the Nuovo Record, that it would shift poorly forever.  

From VeloBase 

The Luxe's body consisted of spindly stamped steel pieces riveted together.  Even on the "racing" version of the Luxe, which had a shorter pulley cage, the pieces would work themselves apart, destroying even the pretense of shifting ease or precision.  The long-caged version would deteriorate even more quickly because the extra length of cage and chain created even more stress on the fragile body.

For a couple of years, some European bikes (such as the Raleigh Super Course and  Motobecane Mirage) were equipped with this derailleur.  Such bikes were usually "sport" models with a wider range of gears than were typically found on such model.  The Luxe Super Touring may have been the first European derailleur made to shift onto a 32 tooth rear cog.  (The largest most other derailleurs could handle was a 28; racers in those days typically had largest gears of 21 to 24.)  It came out just as SunTour derailleurs were first becoming available outside of Japan; within a couple of years, SunTours would adorn the Super Course, Mirage and many other mid-level European and American bikes.

When it was new, the Luxe ST sold for around twenty dollars; the ensemble in the photo went for about forty.  Within a couple of years of its introduction, SunTour and Shimano derailleurs that shifted much better, and lasted longer, could be had for half as much, at least in the US. (Japanese components were significantly more expensive in Europe.)  Still, it appears that Huret made the Luxe derailleurs until the early 1980's, when Sachs bought Huret and a few other French component makers.

As I said, I can understand someone buying a Luxe or Gran Turismo for a collection or a "period" restoration.  But I would not install them on any bike I intended to ride anywhere besides an "oldies" show.