somebikeguy 

i rebuilt the Alfa romeo you can see in the pic including doing all the welding, wiring, motor, transmission…. and OLD BIKE PART COMPATIBILITY STILL BLOWS MY MIND

Piff 

Holy crap, do you have some tools...

somebikeguy Everything I've read is that you're putting undue stress on the frame if you spread/narrow the stays by using an incorrectly sized axle. 2 millimeters difference is okay, 10mm is not.

I also again recommend to not be overly attached to that campy rear derailleur especially if you live in hilly conneticut. It's a very cool piece, and I love the pulleys, but having low gears for the hills will serve you better.

If you're committed to the NR campy then your best option would be to use a drivetrain something along the lines of a 44-32 double crankset up front and a 11-25 cassette in the back. Not the worst gearing...but I think you'd enjoy riding your bike more if you used a long cage derailleur and a 46-30 double in the front and a 11-28 cassette in the rear. Or a cassette with even more range.

You could also consider the tried and true 52/42/30 road triple crankset mated to the wider cassette as well, like a 12-27. The triple is probably what I would gravitate towards, a 42t chainring would be nice to cruise around on while still being able to slip into the granny gear for hills or the larger ring for downhill or when you've got a tailwind. Triple cranksets are simply so damn useful

somebikeguy 

Believe it or not I've been riding it with just the 40t front ring and 13-26t Sachs freewheel and I get around just fine! I'm on the shore and we do have hills but nothing too wild. So I would be happy with a similar range. One cool mod for the NR that I came across is the long "Rally" style cage. At the moment I don't think I need it but its in the back of my mind. https://www.somafabshop.com/shop/som...=974#attr=2270

Thanks for the note on spreading with the wheel. I'll have to read up on that and perhaps I will spread the frame after all. If I do go to 130mm I suppose the options really open up. Now that I look at the Velo Orange hub I'm not entirely sure which cassettes are compatible. If I don't go for VO do you all have any recommendations for a good looking 130mm 32h hub that'll afford me the best selection of cassettes ?

ehcoplex 

Pictures (of the Alfa...), or it didn't happen.....!

somebikeguy 

if I must....

lasauge 

Another vote for a Suntour derailer here as being key. I've got a bike with 7sp Sunrace freewheel, 8sp chain (Wippermann, but I don't think that matters much here), Suntour Superbe Pro derailer, and Simplex Retrofriction shifters and the shifting is buttery smooth, absolute perfection.

somebikeguy 

Okay I am seeing a trend…

While I feel irrational attachment to the NR I like to try new things too. Which model Suntour would suit the ‘69 Bottecchia best?

I also like the campy clamp on shifters. Are the levers at all interchangeable (leaving the clamp mount in place) or does each mfgr have its own boss style?

52telecaster

I routinely run the suntour stuff over 7 speed but it can sometimes need a gentle massage of the stops for 8+. Ymmv. I will say almost any suntour derailleur you find will make easy work of your current freewheel. A lowly Vx will do just fine with a suntour freewheel. There are many out there.

ehcoplex 

Oooh, that GT is sweet... Always lusted after one of those, or a BMW 3.0 CSL.... Ah, well, in another life!

Your angle seems to prioritize performance/rideability over purity, while maintaining the spirit of aesthetics- if you want the best in general-ish era 'correct' ('general-ish' being the operative word...), mate a 1st gen Cyclone (I can't really discern a performance difference between 1st & 2nd gen, but aesthetically 1st gen is nicer) with some Simplex Retrofriction shifters. At some point, at least as far as braze-on bosses go, I think things more or lest standardized to 'campy style', but with clamp-ons I think there is variation. Simplex, being French of course, is it's own animal- but set up right, they're really nice shifters.

3alarmer 

...I have done this on several project bikes, when I already had wheels for the frame and wanted to use them. I never had any issues when I did it.

But I have the several special tools that make it easier to do, like a Park lever arm with hook, and a set of dropout alignment tools. So without further information on your available resources and experience with this kind of thing, I'm loathe to tell you to just go ahead and do it. If you are pulling on the dropouts to widen the stays, it's possible to pop one loose. People talk about the stay bridging coming loose, but if that happens, the bridge was probably brazed up poorly anyway.

If it has already been reset once, I would probably set it up just to check that the work was done correctly back then. And once it's all set up, it's not a whole lot of extra work to reset and align it at 130.

OTOH, I know people say they can get a NR derailleur to handle 28, but I have never had much luck with that. Even with Hyperglide cogs on a freehub, 26 teeth is about the best I can do and still get the thing to work well. It's probably just me.

79pmooney

I'm feeling a little goofy so - my thoughts on the thread title, "Best friction shifting experience with 126mm / 32h constraint". Tough, tough question. I've been shifting under those conditions for maybe 30 years and 50,000 miles. Which of those shifting experiences was "the best"? Who knows? So, so many good ones.

3alarmer 

...as stated, I have not experienced issues with doing this.

79pmooney

3alarmer, what kind of vise is that? Looks nice. My 30+ yo Craftsman is beat to s***. Still works very well except the jaw edges are rounded and the manufacturer won't honor the defunct Craftsman brand. Those bolts might even fit the holes in my table.

3alarmer 

.
...it's one of the ones that is made out of ductile iron somewhere in Taiwan, I think. This one was made and sold by Yost, but it's out of stock on Amazon right now.
I think maybe Grainger used to sell Yost branded bench vises, too. And there are a lot of similar, but not identical ones on Amazon.

I couldn't afford the same thing made in America, even though Wilton makes a good product here. But they sell some Taiwan made models, too.

kunsunoke 

IMO the best choice would be 1st gen Superbe or Cyclone, depending upon the cog setup on the freehub. Cyclone GT long cage would be best if you have large cogs.

Option 2 is to use a late-generation Campagnolo C-Record rear derailleur with slant parallelogram design. I have a C Athena on the Ideor and it works spectacularly well with the Suntour wide-range freewheel.

Option 3 would be to use an HG-compatible Shimano rear derailleur.
'

somebikeguy 

3alarmer - Thanks for sharing. I watched an RJ video where he spread the frame using a threaded rod, I liked the slow and steady nature of that technique.





kunsunoke , ehcoplex Yes, much like the Alfa I like keeping things looking period correct but tweaking to make them "mine" and enjoyable for how I use them. I am not a check-the-serial-number type. Going off looks and country-of-origin alone (how shallow) the C-Record is quite a handsome piece!

pastorbobnlnh 

In my experience with a 120mm '71 Paramount and a 126mm '83 Paramount, the stays are so stiff (as built), neither a 126-hub could ever be forced into the 120 dropouts, nor a 130-hub forced into 126 dropouts. I'm so surprised you can fit the 130mm axle in the 120mm dropouts--- by simply wedging it in.

IMO, the NR RD is a big contributor to your poor shifting experience. A Sachs Aris or UG Shimano 7-speed freewheel should shift better than the IRD. If you go the freehub route, it's easy to modify HG cassette sprockets to fit the UG freehub body. And if you use a 9-speed HG cassette and spacers, you can fit eight sprockets on the 126mm freehub.

ThermionicScott 

If you were dissatisfied with your NR rear derailleur in 1970ish, this SunTour V would have been hitting the stores: https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site...leur_2900.html

Being friction, you can keep using the Campy shifters if you want.

somebikeguy 

What I was implying with the friction shifter swap / hybrid would be aiming to use the best possible feeling shifter lever while retaining the beautiful classic look of the campy clamp on. I think this would mean modifying one or the other as I don't believe the bosses are standard. I asked VO about using these and they said "probably not"

https://velo-orange.com/collections/...-w-dt-shifters

3alarmer 

...the threaded rod is slow and steady in nature. But it can be very inexact in results. The stays rarely spread equally on both sides of the frame (for a number of reasons.)
If you do decide to use that method, measure carefully the final results, in the distance each side of the alignment string ends up from the seat tube.

As stated above, different frames are either easy or more difficult to spread. Again, there are aspects of the geometry and frame construction that contribute to this.

The threaded rod method of spreading seems like a wonderful idea, but the alignment results can be iffy. Then you end up pushing the stays back and forth again, which is something to be avoided if possible.

3alarmer 

...Dia Compe makes and sells a version of these with a band clamp. When VO first listed them, they sold that version. I guess they didn't sell enough of them to continue carrying them. But if you search around on the internet, you can find them for sale link. They do seem to work pretty well, and one of my project bikes for the future has a set in there, to use instead of the Campagnolo shifters it came with. They are a tad pricey, but I figured I would treat myself.

somebikeguy 

But the band claim ain't pretty enough! I am tempted to get a pair of the braze-on from VO and have at some hacking / modding.

79pmooney

You just nailed the reason I will always get frames with no braze-ons for DT shifters except the simple plate (or whatever) boss on the underside to keep a clamp from slipping. Ordered my Mooney with just such a stop. The bike started with the SunTour Power Ratchets I"d raced my Fuji with. 5 years later saw the SunTour top-mounted DT shifters and wanted them right away. (I wanted them when I raced in 1977/8 so I wouldn't knock the bike into the 42-13 when I was climbing 18% walls!) Many years later, I set the bike up fix gear. Sweet! (and probably how it's going to live out the rest of its life with me). And no bosses to snag my leg warmers.

That's three different boss standards the bike has been through. And not one the Campagnolo standard Peter Mooney was set up to do in 1979.

ehcoplex 

I've got the bar-end version of those Dia-Compe shifters on one bike, and they are nice feeling- they seem to have a little finer ratchet than Suntour Bar-Cons. Still, the nicest are the Retrofrictions- and the older style with a band clamp do look 'age appropriate'. People ask for silly $$ for them, but if you're patient (and willing to try eBay.fr) you will eventually find a deal. One thing with the Simplex levers, though, is the sockets for the ends of the cables is smaller than 'standard' (you know.... French!), so one has to take a dremel to the ends and size them down a bit.

Classtime 

I was shifting friction 7 speed for many miles on my Motobecane G.R. last year with Campy shifters like yours, Campy large flange hub, a new Shimano Tourney 14-28 freewheel, SRAM PC58 chain, and a Shimano 1055 short cage rear derailleur. Any of the SIS Shimano units work very very nicely as friction derailleurs. The Dura Ace models are the prettiest.
Cyclones are pretty and they shift well but springs and things can be a maintenance issue (maybe not for you with your shop and skills).