Hi John: As much as I may admire French aesthetics, my advice would be to sell the French parts for some insane amount of money and buy something made more recently by Shimano. I'm sure the French stuff is pretty to look at and cool/vintage, but you'll drive yourself nuts trying to make it work with modern parts on a modern frame. And since you want to do multi-day rides far from home, you may appreciate the fabulous advances in derailleur technology over the past 20 or 30 years.
Funny, in researching the SLJ parts you mentioned, I came across a blog that argues that the SLJ is "the best derailleur ever made". I don't know how that blog author defines "best", but I'd eat my shoe if it turned out that these French antiques shifted as well or stood up to as much hard use/abuse as any of the current Shimano offerings. On Jan 10, 11:35 pm, John Ferguson <rfj1...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > First time on here, and it's my first time building a bike from the > frame up. I'm hoping someone here can help, as I'm a complete > neophyte. I've been riding an older (cheap) French bike for the past > 10 years and finally took the plunge and bought a Rivendell Saluki. > Frame only, of course--I could have taken the easy way out and gotten > a completed bike, but since I'm going to be traveling long distances > on this bike, I figured I needed to build it myself so I know how > everything goes together. > > I'm in the process of acquiring components; I think I have most > everything figured out, except for the following: > > I have a Simplex SLJ5500 rear derailleur and an SLJ front derailleur > from my old bike. However, I can't figure out with a high degree of > confidence what an appropriate range would be for the chainwheels and > the cassette/freewheel. Unfortunately I sold my old bike without > counting teeth. > > I'm planning on taking very long rides, sometimes multi-day, and I'm > hoping to enter some formal randonneur events this year. > > Anyone have advice for me? Anything would be appreciated; I've spent > many hours trying to figure this out. > > Thanks! > > John --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
