daka

Does anyone know how wide-range of a freewheel is compatible with the Huret Luxe long cage derailleur? Will it clear a 32 tooth sprocket?

kroozer 

I have no experience with the Luxe, but the other Huret derailleurs I've used have all handled a pretty wide range. I remember my short-cage Jubilee shifting a 14-32 freewheel with no problem. However, I think the general idea was to get the wide-range gears from a big difference in chainrings, more than from using a large freewheel, hence the long cage to wrap lots of chain. If you look at photos of French touring bikes from the 60's, very few have big freewheels, but many used wide-range chainring combos. But give it a try, I would think there's a good chance it works.

dddd

The Huret Luxe seems to be functionally equivalent to the Allvit, which in long-cage form would clear a 32t as on a Schwinn SuperSport.

But the big cog clearance didn't come from the long cage!
Instead, it was a different "claw" hanger that positioned the derailer more rearward which gained the clearance.
These derailers all have a concentric top pulley and pivot, so pulling the chain tighter won't improve the cog clearance at all (same as with most Suntour derailers).

I would be concerned with loss of shifting responsiveness over the smaller cogs if the large-cage style of claw is used to pull the derailer back. It's much more of a problem today due to flexible modern chain.

I have used the standard Allvit with as large as a 30t cog, and when using smaller than 28t I will grind the claw hanger's stop to allow the derailer to swing forward a little more for best shifting.

daka

Thanks for the responses. I used to have a Schwinn Super Sport that I used as a commuter and I'm pretty sure it had a 32 tooth sprocket with the long cage Allvit but I really don't remember any details about derailleur's hanger. That bike was "adopted" by an Italian friend of my wife's and I believe it is now ridden in the Veneto region where I imagine a baby blue Schwinn with "mag wheel" chainrings is quite an unusual sight.

I found the Fred DeLong review article on the Huret Luxe and it is clear there that he used it with a 30 tooth sprocket and may have tested it as well with a 32. I will assemble a freewheel and lengthen the chain to give it a try, since there is a reasonable probability that it will work.

T-Mar

The Huret Luxe came in three variants with different large cog and chain wrap capacities due to various combinations of body and cage length. The short length body as used on the Competition had a claimed maximum cog size of 24T while the longer bodied Touring and Super Touring had a claimed maximum cog size of 30T. As previous noted, the cage length affects only the chain wrap capacity and not the maximum cog size, due the the cage pivot being concentric with the the jockey pulley mounting.


The large cog capacity can vary somewhat from the claim, especially if you are direct mounting it to a dropout with an integral hanger, as the length of the hanger impacts the large cog clearance. If necessary, this can be effectively increased by moving the wheel further back in the dropout, though at the expense of some shifting crispness (not that this derailleur was every crisp to begin with). You may also have to play somewhat with the chain length, to get the cage angle correct, so that the cage extension does not interfere with the cogs. While there may be some cases where 32T is not achievable, the claims are sufficiently conservative that in most cases it will work, though some adjustments to axle placement and chain length may be required.

daka

Thanks for posting the data sheet. Where did you find that? The model I have is the 2100 ST and it looks like Huret is only willing to sign up for 30 teeth. I'm hesitant to push their specs since, although the derailleur shifts well enough and is not a common sight, I don't see it as very robust. It is kind of "two-dimensional", and the parallelogram pivots are merely cantilevered off of the derailleur's "body". There may be a reason it was only available for four years or so.......

dddd

The design of the arms and pivots was straight out of the 1950's, so the whole of the design had timed out by the late 1970's when the use of 6s freewheels was becoming common. The "all" part of "Allvit" actually meant "3, 4 or 5 speeds".

The length of the body created a problem of leverage. Either the long body ended up flimsy and prone to bending out of alignment (as with the 1st-gen Allvit and later with the Luxe), or the standard Allvit's long but stronger body had enough leverage to easily bend the dropout hanger.
Making the body longer yet was thus out of the question, even as a longer body and arms is what would have been needed to carry the inverted "knee-action" design into the 1980's (being paired with larger and/or 6s freewheels).
As it is, the Allvit needs serious modification (and the bike's axle spacing made just so) just to handle a 6s freewheel.

One more problem with the Allvit/Luxe design was that the actuation became highly non-linear as the largest cog was selected, this made yet worse when using a 6s freewheel. The cable travel then became huge and the lever throw from the biggest to the next-biggest cog was similarly huge and odd-feeling. This design was in all ways quite far from the direction that competing designs from Suntour and Shimano were heading as the SIS era was nearly in sight.