Those washers are just plain WRONG!
That washer looks munged out of round!
Someone for whatever reason may have tried to increase the width of the pulley cage but back in 1975 when the Cyclone derailleurs came out, 5 speed freewheels were de rigueur.
The "current" standard outside width for 5 & 6 speed chains is 7.8 mm (5/16")
NOMINAL. (I know, 5/16" = .3125" = 7.94mm but that's the published spec).
6 speed – 7.8 mm (5/16 in) (all brands) (5 speed too)
7 speed – 7.3 mm (9/32 in) (Shimano HG), 7.1 mm (9/32 in) (SRAM, Shimano IG)
8 speed – 7.3 mm (9/32 in) (Shimano HG), 7.1 mm (9/32 in) (SRAM, Shimano IG)
9 speed – 6.6 to 6.8 mm (1/4 to 9/32 in) (all brands)
10 speed - 6.2 mm (1/4 in) (Shimano, Campy), 5.88 mm (7/32 in) (Campy, KMG)
One possibility is that a previous owner may have had Bullseye Sealed Bearing Pulleys on that derailleur. The bearing width was about 8mm and they came with a bunch of extra washers to put on both sides of the pulleys to fit in 9mm or 10mm wide pulley cages.
When they removed the crazy expensive Bullseye pulleys they put some washers in the wrong place, inside the dust shields???
Real Bullseye pulleys are currently going for $75.00 on eBay!!! BITD we thought that they were exorbitant at $12 a set!
I have them on several old Suntour and Shimano RDs. Been using them since the mid 70's.
The reason why I spent the $12 was not the bullpucky crap about reduced friction but because they ran smoother than the original hard plastic Japanese pulleys which had sharp edges and took forever to wear in.
The aluminum Bullseye pulleys wore in quickly and transmitted less vibrations into the pedals (the Princess and the Pea).
Campy and Simplex pulleys had smoother "teeth" and were not a problem.
About 10+ years back I put one of the Crane RD with Bullseye pulleys on a bike I'd just built up. I used an SRAM PC-48 chain made for 6-7-8 speed cogs.
The new chain was narrower - 7.1mm (9/32") wide and skipped over the tops of the Bullseye pulleys. I filed a slight chamfer on both sides of the pulleys and that solved the problem!
BTW there were 3 different non documented versions of the original Suntour Cyclone RDs.
Suntour did a new product announcement for the Cyclone derailleurs in several of the bicycle trade rags in the fall of 1974. They were vapor ware until mid 1975.
In June of 1975 I brought 2 sets of Cyclone derailleurs into our shop to check them out. They were from the original shipment to hit the US.
I replaced the Campy NR derailleurs on one of my bikes and never went back!
I kept both sets for myself. I still have one of them NOS.
That original Cyclone RD had a 26T maximum FW capacity. The two later versions were limited to 24T (I've run 28T -32T FWs with Campy NR derailleurs for years so when I say 24T Max that's Max!)
Note, supposedly one of the newer versions will handle 26T with a longer dropout hanger but not with a standard Campy dropout. For example, this 1979 version.
verktyg
BTW 2 - the easy way to get some side to side float in the upper pulley for index shifting is to sand or file about .5mm to 1mm off of both sides of the pulley. The lateral float allows the pulley to self center on the sprocket.
This doesn't work with every RD so you'll have to check it out first.
I have several Campy NR rear derailleurs that index shift with Shimano SIS levers. Even in friction mode never have to trim them after every shift.