Kilroy1988 

So I just came across a bike and the owner mentioned his belief that the Campagnolo Rally rear derailleur was "the best one ever made," so I went to look for them on Ebay. Apparently a lot of people agree! The prices are outrageous. What's with the buzz on these things? I'd love to know more about them. Cheers!

-Gregory

T-Mar

I assume you're talking about the early version with the horizontal parallelogram.? If so, basically, it was a copy of the Shimano Crane GS. In its day (1974-1982) it was good shifting, for a Campagnolo derailleur, courtesy of the horizontal cage and upper pivot spring. It was very durable but heavy and had a strong return spring requiring high friction on the shift levers and consequently had a heavy level pull.

The high value is due the fact that first, it is vintage Campagnolo. Second, it is a touring derailleur which, in combination with it being vintage Campagnolo, makes it rare. Third, Campagnolo's other two touring derailleurs of the 1970s-1980s paled in comparison. So, if you want a periodic correct Campagnolo derailleur on your vintage Italian bicycle but no longer have the legs to push the gears that your NR/SR derailleurs can handle, this is the grail derailleur. However, if you are willing to accept non-Campagnolo, for $10-$20 you can get a period correct SunTour that will outperform the Rally.

bertinjim 

Kilroy1988-

I had a Mariposa touring bike with a 1st Gen Rally, an Avocet triple and all Campy otherwise. It was an excellent shifting derailleur on a Maillard 700 freewheel and Sedisport chain. Nicely crafted and good shifting. There have been comments that the upper pivot tends to break off but I have no personal experience of that. T-Mar is correct, "...if you want a periodic correct Campagnolo derailleur on your vintage Italian bicycle... this is the grail derailleur."

Bandera

BITD they were regarded by club riders and touring types as overpriced, overweight cobby shifting and slightly less of an outright failure than the previous attempts by Campag to produce a wide range triple capable rear derail. As @T-Mar notes the Shimano Crane GS, as adopted on the Schwinn Paramount P-15 as a "Schwinn Approved" model, or the very excellent and affordable Sun Tour GT variants were the go-to models for century riders and loaded touring bikes alike.

Today? @T-Mar has the motivation of the Camapg/Period Correct faithful pretty well nailed. Finding NOS is possible because we couldn't sell them when new.

-Bandera

bikemig 

+ 1 on all this.

hobbs1951

There are three generations of Rally, I have the second (try and avoid the first - without the web mod), and there are long cage versions of Triomphe and Victory (I don't know whether you has these in the US).

So I have the Rally, a Deerhead and a Suntour on my tourers and the latter two shift better than the Rally - if the Rally is set up really well it is quite a lot better. I didn't pay silly money for my Rally nor would I when compered to the other two.

With my race bikes/Audax I'd rather run with a more compact chainset rather than a long cage mech - e.g you can get a 46 and a 41 ring for an NR/SR/CR chainset...and don't forget the good old TA - period for many racebikes.

John.

pastorbobnlnh 

Save your money and buy what has been mentioned as alternatives or the Huret/Sachs-Huret Eco Duopar. All are better. The Rally requires lots of over shifting and trimming. Just my two cents!

Kilroy1988 

Thanks for the replies, folks. I had no intention of purchasing one right now - I have no bicycle that it would be suitable on. I was just wondering why they're so expensive and if they actually functioned well enough to justify the cost. I'm a fan of late-'70s Suntour derailleurs myself, and will stick to the VX I have for my next build!

-Gregory

jimmuller 

A comment on shifting with a derailleur of that sort, both the Rally and the Crane GS.

First, the motivation: The "slant" in Suntour's awesomely effective patented design moved the guide pulley down as it moved inward, up as it moved outward. This maintained a more consistent distance between the pulley and the sprockets it was moving between, hence more consistent shifting. It was the best thing to hit rear derailleurs since the invention of the rear derailleur.

The Crane/Rally used a different technique. The pulley cage formed an inverted L between the tension pulley at the bottom on the long leg of the L, the cage pivot at the bend of the L, and the guide pulley sticking out back on the short leg of the L. As chain links were taken up by a larger sprocket it pulled the tension pulley forward, which moved the guide pulley down. So the guide pulley tracked up and down with sprocket size much like with the slant parallelogram. The weakness of the design is that front shifts also consumed or released chain, so a front shift also moved the pulley vertically. On the big ring the pulley would be lower and thus further away, so rear shifting while on the big ring was never as precise as shifting while on the small ring. The bigger the front tooth count differential, the bigger the shifting difference would be between the rings. If your gearing is set up as half-step crossover then you wouldn't see much difference. With a bigger crossover pattern, or even a triple since these were "touring derailleurs" after all, the big ring shifts could be problematic. You had to select your chain length so that the pulley would not interfere with the sprockets while you were on the small ring, which meant that the pulley was always a bit further away from the sprockets than you'd like whenever you were on the big ring.

Another possible behavior was unintended rear shifting. Supposed you shifted the rear while on the big ring but didn't get the pulley lined up exactly right with the target sprocket. If you then shifted to the small ring the pulley would move upward and the chain's angle between the pulley and the current sprocket would increase. A misalignment that was okay on the big ring might be bad enough on the small ring that the chain would catch the adjacent sprocket and shift unexpectedly. People might blame the derailleur, but it was feature of the design. You were always better off shifting the rear while running on the small ring.

It wasn't a fatal flaw, just one to be aware of. FWIW, the Simplex SXn10GT derailleurs had similar geometry. They worked pretty well too. The VGT-Luxe had the guide pulley co-axial with the pivot so it had no such behavior. However the Vx-S and Vx-GT moved the guide pulley slightly behind the pivot so they had a little bit of it, sort of a compromise that got some of its vertical pulley movement from the slant and some from the cage pivoting.

JohnDThompson 

There were multiple versions of the Rally derailleur. The first was, as @T-Mar note, basically a clone of the Shimano Crane GS. It had a narrow neck between the upper mounting bolt and the parallelogram that could fail. The first generation Rally was modified to add a little webbing on this narrow neck to reinforce it, but was otherwise identical to the original.

The second generation was an entirely different design, but not an improvement. This version was essentially a Nuovo Record derailleur with a long pulley cage, pretty much the same as you can make yourself by mounting a Soma long cage onto a Nuovo Record body. It lacked the sprung upper pivot, and so didn't shift quite as precisely as the first generation design.

The final generation design was completely different from the first two, and incorporated both the sprung upper pivot of the first generation and the slant-pantograph of a SunTour derailleur, like most modern derailleurs. IMO, it shifts far better than the first two.

The Golden Boy 

To go with what John said:










Every once in a while, I look at those things and sort of have the urge to try one out.

Then I realize anyone who's used them, and is honest about them, knows that a run of the mill $25 V-GT Luxe is SO much better, AND I have virtually no Campagnolo components in use.

For use on 1970s bikes with large ranges- the Suntour Cyclone GT is the cat's pyjamas. It's both beautiful and rugged, it's less expensive than most any Campagnolo, it's upscale from the V-GT Luxe and weighs less than most modern derailleurs and it functions second to none.

T-Mar

My recollection is that the final generation (very late 1980s) still used a standard (i.e. non-slant) parallelogram. Basically, it was very similar to the 1st generation but with a smoothly finished surface and a screened Campagnolo logo. Is there a later generation of which I'm not aware? I thought that the the final generation of the Rally was discontinued with the introduction of the ATB derailleurs?

JohnDThompson 

This is my last-generation Rally, showing the slant-parallelogram:

fietsbob

Bottom one above is still like the 1st ones, (top) just different outer piece of the parallelogram, not slanted;; ..

Campag Euclid and the slightly lower cost, Olympus, were the Campag MTB group made after Sun tour's Patent had lapsed
It has the slant pantograph (that looks like what john shows directly above)
I got some when <C> dropped out of the MTB sector on close out in the 80s .. was functionally an XT ,
but has more Metal in it so weighed more .. Likewise the cranks , interchangeable with the M730 but heavier..



I used these on my Touring bike from the mid 80's until now.
I have a Rally 1, Bought new in 1974, it still works, needs less cable pull than the Euclid with
which I use a Suntour bar end shifter, the older one works with the older <C> bar end shifter..
& 6 speed freewheels.. Both..




...

jimmuller 

That's the way they have always looked to me too. The axes of the main pivots, while obviously not co-planar with the axes of the parallelogram pivots, were still perpendicular to them. Or to put it another, more direct way, the axes of the parallelogram still looked vertical when viewed from directly behind. If they don't tilt inward at the top the cage end of the parallelogram won't move vertically as the parallelogram arms swing in and out.

But with a carefully chosen chain length and not too much difference between the two chainrings, they will shift well enough. I have long cages on NR derailleurs on three bikes and they do pretty well, not as well as a Cyclone but well enough that I am not tempted to replace them. After all, style is worth something

T-Mar

I believe that is an early Campagnolo ATB derailleur, either Euclid or Centaur.

T-Mar

I believe that is an early Campagnolo ATB derailleur, either Euclid or Centaur.

repechage

I think you are both correct, Campagnolo fused some offerings mechanically but marketed them separately.

jimmuller 

So was it really a Eutaur or a Cenclid?

What do you get if you cross an elephant with a rhino? elifiknow

T-Mar

A member of the International Buster Keaton Society (aka a Damfino).

noglider 

I had a first generation Rally which I loved, because it was beautiful. It didn't work all that well. My daughter shifted it into her spokes, and the derailleur broke at the knuckle. I'm told this derailleur was vulnerable to this kind of break. I was a bit heart-broken. I still have it, in pieces.

bikingshearer 

Bingo. Spot on.

I went the "Campy period correct" route on my Eroica bike. The looks are cool, the shifting much less so. After two years of mediocre shifting, I swapped it out for a SunTour this year. The shifting is much better and I was able to sell the Rally at the Erocia CA swap meet to someone who wanted one - now we're all happy.

Lascauxcaveman 

I did that with an NR.

But truthfully, any derailleur you send into the spokes if fairly apt to break at the knuckle.

mech986 

Timo 2.0

On a side-note from the derailleur discussion: that's a lovely bike! Which rims did you use? Looks like Mavic decals.