bark_eater 

I've got a Schwinn Passage frame with most of the original parts except the Huret DuoPar rear derailleur.

I know I could track one down on ebay, but this bike has risen to the top of the pile as a "non precious" rider, so any major "investment" is going into tires.

The front derailleur is a Suntour XC Sport, so something of that flavor?

I have a couple Mountech rears, which were supposed to be Duopar beaters, but they have that reputation for implosion...

Since I'm sticking with friction shifting, I guess what I'm looking for the "next best thing" to the DuoPar.

As an aside, I have a set of Weinman Mafac cantilever clones that I could swap in to keep the needle from shifting too far from Frenchieness.

nlerner

My go-to, large capacity, friction-shifting RD for that era is the Shimano Deerhead:

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site...1st_style.html

Might create ideological conflict with that SunTour FD, however.

bark_eater 

I was just offered a Duopar, so it looks like this first world problem may be solved. Untill the Bill Vetter see's it....

bark_eater 

And while I have a candidate Duopar lined up, I discovered that a similar scenario has been pondered before.

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...v-commute.html

uncle uncle

So, as an aside... why do you think Schwinn spec'ed a Huret Duopar initially? Where was that connection that a Duopar was a good touring derailleur? (Curious and Ignorant...).

bark_eater 

And was the Suntour XC Sport that much better than the Huret offering?

1986 is way before Bridgestone started doing "mixed" groupset builds.

Maybe one of the "Schwinn's" won or lost a bet?

All in all its a quirky bike.

Murray Missile 

I have XC Sport on my '86 Takara Highlander MTB. It originally came with 3X6 XC Sport friction shift but I fell heir to the 3X6 Accushift indexed version which is visually nearly identical so I switched over to that. I'm quite happy with it for casually riding, the Takara is more of a cruiser now. The only negative I've noticed is that I have to stay on top of the trim on the RD a lot more than my Shimano SIS equiped bikes but other than that it is silky smooth.

bark_eater 

There's another important decision I have to make. Do I pull the little red Raleigh stickers off the hubs and rims of the zero milage wheelset that finally found a home with the Passage?

The Golden Boy 

Ugh... I still hate Duopars...

A couple of things about that thread- first- around that time, like within like 2 weeks, something like 4 people on the forum got 1985 Trek 620s- including Robatsu with his famous Phonenix Project 620. Fuji Otaku: The Phoenix Project - The 1985 Trek 620 Alights At the time, I didn't understand the concept or the benefits of the "retro mod" like he was doing to his bike. I looked at my bike as "a 1980s bike that someone upgraded in 1992." Now, I want to put the best stuff on my bike, irrespective of time frame- and when I was doing my Trek 720- I didn't quite realize that I was doing a lot of the same things he did 6 years before- until I was looking for people that had done the Dura Ace 7803 rear derailleur.

pastorbobnlnh was kind enough to do a clean up and repair on my Duopar. I may have put it back on a bike... but the simple fact is I didn't and don't trust it. When I got my 720- I was kind of hoping for a reset of that trust- and something happened- my guess is the spring stop on the arm failed- and the arm went all coo-coo for cocoa puffs... It was time for that to go.

Even though you have a Duopar on the way... If'n I were to get a friction derailleur for a 1985/86 touring bike- I would go Suntour XC. Bonus for Suntour XC with a triple pulley cage. Plus, it would sorta match with the XC Sport FD. If I didn't care about it being 1985/86 and still going friction- Suntour XC Pro or XC Comp. Great derailleurs. Their drawback is if you want to go indexed- they're Accushift. Next, I'd go XT M735. The M735 is right at the pinnacle of "classic" derailleurs. If you've ever had an XC Pro and an M735 in your hands at the same time- you'll feel the difference- and plus the XC Pro logo really pops more than it does on the M735, but the M735 is SIS and most easily upgradeable to indexed shifting.

Never, ever think that the Mountech is a Duopar killer. It was designed to be as such- but it wasn't. The 2nd variant didn't have the captive pulley, but it had 3 pivots and an OUTRAGEOUSLY long arm with a 15T pulley- it didn't shift well at all. Mountech front derailleurs are among the very best ever and the rear is in the running for the very worst ever.

bikemig 

No, you never pull of original stickers, . You'll have a RaSchwinn. The Duopar was a good derailleur in some ways. I used one on a cross country tour. It can handle a lot of chain and it shifts nicely. That said, it is not the stoutest rear derailleur. Personally I'd run something else on a commuter.

The Golden Boy 

The Duopar was an expensive and coveted derailleur that didn't depend on a slant parallelogram- the 2nd pivot kept the chain close to the cog- and it had the ability to wrap a LOT of chain AND it worked on cogs as big as 38- so it was, on paper, the best touring derailleur. On top of that, Frank Berto had his testing machine- and the Duopar always tested among- if not the best. Suntour had owned that title with the slant parallelogram and lost it to Huret- then chased that title to their own detriment. They used their small R&D department to re-engineer the Duopar instead of getting a reliable indexing system.

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site...of_duopar.html


As far as Schwinn and the Passage- it was the 2nd underneath the Voyageur in the touring heirarchy for Schwinn- it would have been analogous to the Trek 620- which it shared some components with- namely the Duopar Eco and the Sachs/Huret ratcheting shifters.

The Golden Boy 

The "group" concept was more forced on manufacturers by Shimano by making parts that didn't play well with other parts. Try using SLR brakes with non-SLR levers- and mixing/matching indexing is a crapshoot. We've just grown accustomed to a bike being equipped with a single manufacturer's group. The "eclectic mix" was the rule, not the exception.

Besides, at least the touring bikes were very diverse- look at the 1985 Trek 720- Shimano brakes with GranCompe levers, Suntour shifters, Sachs/Huret rear derailleur, Simplex front derailleur, Maillard hubs, SR seat post and pedals and MKS clips, Sugino crank... that's all stock. On the other hand... the 1984 Schwinn Voyageur SP was conspicuous by being completely Shimano free.

bark_eater 

I can admit to being a bike hoarder... That out of the way, I have 3 other "well used" touring frames that I assume originally had Duopar's, that "went away" before I found them. I've also picked up a few bikes originally spec-ed Mountech's..... And came to me with mismatched wheelsets....

amillhench

As someone who is also building up an ‘86 Passage, what are you running for brakes? I’ve got some Shimano BR-M550s with thin line pads that work perfect with a 700c conversion on this bike.

My rear derailleur is the above mentioned Suntour XC Pro running 9 speed (11-32) via friction.

bark_eater 

Its got the original Dia-Compe 960's on it. I have some Dia-Compe 981's I might put on so I can try a 700c wheelset later, but that's not a big priority. I also have a set of Weinman Mafac cantilever clones that I'm thinking about for a bit more French-ish-ness.
I'm going to give the Duo-Par a try, but want this bike to be mechanically reliable, so we'll see how that goes.

The Golden Boy 

My 1984 Stumpjumper Sport came to me with most everything stock- stock front wheel, but with an XT RD and rear wheel with an LX hub- both from around 1993. You totally know the Mountech seized up and threw itself into the rear wheel in 1993.

There are people here that I trust that have ridden more miles on a Duopar than I've ridden in my life- and they're fine with them. I'm hanging on to mine- mostly because I'm a hoarder. ... umm.... I mean "collector."

bark_eater 

"Custodian of a signifigant collection of material culture"

JohnDThompson 

If you want to keep with the Schwinn motif, look for a "LeTour GT" rear derailleur, which is a Schwinn-badged Shimano Crane GT. This was Schwinn's replacement for execrable Campagnolo Gran Turismo previously used on their triple-ring touring bikes.

Mountechs work well if you keep them clean. Unfortunately, they were marketed at the off-road crowd and didn't fare well in that environment. If you find a used one, check that the upper pulley turns freely; they tend to collect grit in the internal spring mechanism and can jam up.

uncle uncle

Hey Golden Boy... thanks for giving such a great and comprehensive answer to my curiosity query and filling in the gaps of my knowledge.

79pmooney

bark_eater There is an issue that might be there and will seriously affect mounting either a Heuret RD or any other. The hanger type. Older Heuret RDs used a different position for the "B" screw and the hangers reflected it. The hanger stop is something like 45 degrees forward of the common ones. (counter-clockwise looking at the bike from the right side). This was the French standard in the early days of derailleurs and stayed on at least into the early '70s. Older Simplex RDs and dropourts used the same standard. (My '73 Raleigh Competition came with Heuret dropouts and hanger.) The Japanese copied the Campagnolo Campagnolo standard and that became the ISO standard. Heuret and Simplex may well have also moved to the new ISO when it was adopted. I do not know,

So, I am no expert here other than knowing first hand that running an RD of one standard on the other standard of drop doesn't work. Period. Until you modify that dropout. (A French standard one can be modified by brazing or welding in a piece or mechanically attaching it. You might be able to just file an ISO hanger but I'm guessing you will have to add material in the area of the new stop.

bark_eater 

I don't have the bird in hand yet, but I believe that this generation Huret rear derailleur uses a separate washer to index the hangers stop. This particular Duo par reportedly came off of a Trek, so it should have the right adapter washer.

JohnDThompson 

Older Simplex dropouts used an unthreaded hanger, and needed to be tapped in order to mount a non-Simplex derailleur. Later Simplex dropouts were threaded, even though Simplex deralleurs didn't use the threads.

Huret dropouts were threaded, but the pivot stop was not compatible with non-Huret deralleurs.

Huret made two different adapter washers to accommodate either Huret or Campagnolo-type dropouts:

Road Fan

If you want to understand what made the Duopar known as a touring mech, its the vertical paralellogram combined with the long cage, which enables it to access large to small rear cogs, and to wrap enough chain to control a large sprocket size range. In this role it was known as a very smooth shifter.

It could be that other alternatives were not as good and not available.

Road Fan

Yes, as long as the correct washer did not get lost over the centuries.

OTS 

Found this interesting.



Better image link here: