This scene took my breath away. As the curtain opened, I beheld "30 Years of Cycling Fashion" hanging on display. I was ready for a docent to offer cheese and crackers. Actually this is how I hang my bike in my storage shed to do some maintenance work. It scared me when I opened the shed door.
So this is my original derailleur which has given five years of flawless service. It gracefully announced its demise on Saturday's 200K.
Behold the crack. That's all folks.
I tried swapping parts with another Suntour derailleur from the scrap box.
I got the original cage reasonably straight.
I like this cage because you can insert and remove the chain without tools. Its disadvantage is its proclivity to bend out of shape.
No luck. I couldn't find a combination of parts which let the chain nicely span all six sprockets.
I finally bit the bullet and pulled an ugly sheet metal derailleur from the junk box. It came from a mountain bike which spent a week at the Burningman festival in the northern Nevada desert, and was caked with corrosive alkaline playa dust. The fit is awfully tight, but it might work reliably. I'll test it a few miles in daylight before commuting in an early dark morning. Behold the "TD1 Torque Drive System". It sounds impressive.
