Rapid rise derailleur suggestion

[chintan jadwani]

I'm looking to try a RR derailleur and want something under 50-60 ideally.

Which ones would you recommend? Were there are early RR derailleurs that one should stay from or budget ones that are a good value? Were there differences in pulley sizes - so would be better to get one where replacements are available?

I'm currently seeing an LX m580, xt M760, an xtr m951 and xtr m952 around that range on ebay in different used conditions...and then the prices rise very quickly! 

Thanks a lot for guiding :)

Chintan

[Victor Hanson]

Any are good.  I am assuming you are using a cassette with the standard 34t or 36t top gear.   Any those you list will do the job adequately. .

vtw

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[Johnny Alien]

Honestly I gave up on them because the costs are way over what a very nice non-RR sells for. Its an interesting feature and I understand why people like it but at the end of the day I personally don't think the difference is life changing enough to pay the premium. Shimano really doesn't make any junk at any price point though so I think any of them will work. Some are more attractive than others. If Rivendell eventually comes out with their RR RD I will likely pick it up to support them. They have dropped a lot of time and money into that project.

[EGNolan]

I have acquired a few and enjoy them when paired with the correct thumbshifter. To me, they're not inherently better than High Normal derailleurs, BUT because I always use my thumbshifters to shift the rear derailleur and keep them on the inside of my bars, the Low Normal/Rapid Rise keep me moving in the same direction regardless of whether it's a Right thumbshifter or a Left thumbshifter. I've used (and still have) a Deore, LX, XT & XTR. While the weight and appearance differ, I haven't seen a huge improvement in shifting from one to the other... I've got more RR derailleurs than bikes at this point (and love my High Normal XTR) so if you'd be into a well loved LX or really good shape Deore, I'd be happy to sell one for $50 shipped.

Eric 

Indpls

[ian m]

I believe the M952 is high normal, but you can't go wrong with the M951

[John Rinker]

Just curious: What does 'high normal' mean in the derailleur world?

Cheers, John

[Junes]

High normal refers to “regular” rear derailleurs, for which the default position with no spring tension is in the highest gear. Hence, high normal. Low normal (what Shimano called Rapid Rise) is the opposite: the default derailleur position without spring tension is in the lowest (largest) gear. 

This is why Grant/Riv are calling their low normal derailleur in development the “OM,” for opposite movement, sort of rejecting the notion that high normal is the absolute normal. The different movements are just opposite each other. 

On Mar 18, 2024, at 11:02 PM, John Rinker <jwri...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just curious: What does 'high normal' mean in the derailleur world?

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[John Rinker]

Perfectly clear! Thanks JJ.

[Peter Adler]

To be nitpicky, "high normal"/"low normal" is terminology that's meaningful primarily for parallelogram derailleurs. We operate as if those are the only derailleurs that exist because parallelogram derailleurs (mostly developed as extrapolations and knockoffs of Campagnolo's 1951 Gran Sport, with important upper pivot developments by Simplex and then extensive advancement by Shimano and Suntour) have essentially eliminated the phantasmigorical range of derailleur designs that existed before 1960.

Consider the Cyclo, a 1930s design employed widely by French framebuilders for both touring and townie bikes. The derailleur mounts under the driveside chainstay, and has no spring action at all - a single looping cable caused a helical shaft to pull the derailleur's pulley cage in one direction or the other, and the cage goes however far you pull it. In the case of the Cyclo, or other derailleurs in the category Jan Heine refers to as "desmodromic" such as the Nivex Rene Herse is duplicating at (I'm sure) great expense, there is no "normal"; there is no position to which the derailleur cage returns when cable tension is released because cable tension is equal throughout the derailleur's range. There is no spring to return the cage to a point of stasis.

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site/french_patent_582247_-_cyclo.html

Our understanding that a "normal" derailleur state is conditioned by the derailleurs which which we each have personal experience is easy to forget. A couple years ago, Grant published a blahg item commenting on a 1950s French racer brought in by our mutual acquaintance Ted Trambley of Martinez, whom I know from CR primarily as a hobbyist restorer like myself. He had brought in an early 1950s Alcyon (a marque which won a fair number of Tours de France in the 1920s-30s) equipped with a Huret suicide front derailleur (a mutual interest of Grant's and mine; I got Grant's reassembled after an attempted cloner had sent it back from Australia in pieces) and a Huret Louison Bobet rear derailleur. That rear derailleur fits into a category I call "pullchain", because I haven't seen another generic name for the type; the shift cable pulls a chain which goes through the derailleur body to the pulley cage, and increasing tension on the shifter+cable+chain draws the pulley cage outwards towards the body of the derailleur projecting outward from the frame, with counteracting pressure from a sort of flat clock-type spring.

https://www.rivbike.com/blogs/grant-petersens-blog/late-march-3

Grant's post gets excited about the fact that this means that relaxing cable tension means the pulley cage goes inwards towards the large cog - i.e., a "low normal"/"rapid-rise" derailleur. What he doesn't comment on is the fact that in the 40s-50s there were dozens of derailleur models from multiple companies in multiple countries (including Japan; the first Shimano and Suntour derailleurs were knockoffs of Simplex pullchain derailleurs) that did exactly the same thing, because that's just how the design works. Pullchain rears were the most common format of racing derailleur in the era, until enough teams bought Campagnolo's parallelogram derailleurs to displace them. I don't know why Grant doesn't mention this; I'm guessing it's because that style/design of derailleur is outside the range of his first-hand experience, as it is for me until recently and for almost any other rider/bike tech nerd under 85.

"Absolute normal"? "Opposite movement"? Who's the Shifting Pope who gets to decide what "normal" is, from which everything else is a deviation? People have been making multigeared bikes for over 100 years, most of which have incorporated some mechanical means of changing gears while in motion. A few systems are still around largely because all the manufacturers dropped the other systems during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, but there's patents and surviving examples of other options. IMHO, rapid-rise parallelogram derailleurs are a little foolish - not because they've been tried in the marketplace several times and very few people other than Grant liked them, but because they're trying to force a dropped parallelogram mechanism to produce the opposite result of what the mechanism was designed to do, which is likely to be done with Rube Goldberg engineering. How much more of that do we really need?

Peter Adler

who was a devout rider of the Huret Duopar, the world's most over-engineered derailleur, for well over a decade in

Berkeley, California/USA

On Monday, March 18, 2024 at 8:17:37 PM UTC-7 J J wrote:

[Patrick Moore]

Interesting information about derailleur design history. But I read the "normal" in "low-normal" or "high-normal" as simply "relaxed spring" and not as "the way it ought to work."

My 2010 (purchased IIRC in 2011 or so) Sam Hill came with a "low-normal" LX rd, and it was one of the best shifting rds I've used (first-gen Silver bar end shifters) -- but that was simply because it was a mature-design Shimano. I fully expect that I'd have gotten used to the reversed spring action, but I didn't feel like doing so and sold it, and replaced it with an equally good-shifting Micoshift road rd. (All modern rds are among the best-shifting rds I've ever used.)

I did somehow manage to find a NOS "low-normal" Cyclo Benelux rd on a bike shop in Nairobi in 1970 and used it on a makeshift 2-speed SA AW block (after shimming out the cage to accommodate a 1/8" chain). That too worked fine, over 2 cogs but then I had removed the outer chainring (50 t IIRC; that left the 40 t inner) and front shifter so I had only 1 derailleur movement to keep track of.

Frank Berto's early 2000's book, "The Dancing Chain" was a wonderful, thorough but very readable historical overview of derailleur systems from the turn of the 19th century up to at least the 8 speed era. 

Patrick Moore, who likes the term "shifting pope."

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[Patrick Moore]

Low-normal, the old-fashioned way:

[Patrick Moore]

BTW, Grant is wrong in the March 2022 blog about the second lever for the Simplex pullchain rd. It is indeed meant to take up or relax chain tension, but not because the derailleur didn't do that. The Simplex, like the Benelux, has a coil spring under that spiral ribbon spring -- both springs encircle a shaft over which the derailleur cage is pulled -- and the coil spring provides both in and out tension and cage tension (to put tension on the chain): you have to wind up the cage clockwise by not quite 360* when installing the chain, which is a real pain.

The chain tension lever allowed you to fine tune this chain tension; in fact, to minimize it while still keeping enough so that the chain stayed on the chosen cog; this because, back then, at least some people thought that a tensioned chain caused a great deal of friction in the drivetrain.

[Miles Payton]

I got a used XTR M951 long cage derailleur for a song on ebay a few months ago. Maybe there's not much demand? The seller gave me a half off offer so I couldn't refuse. Anyway it works great and it appears they're usually $50-80 depending on the condition. Not bad for what was once a top-of-the-line derailleur. I'd just avoid the NOS stuff because that's where you start spending $200 or more. 

I've been plenty happy with mine. It's paired to Gevenalle 10 speed shifters on my Atlantis. I can't speak to replacement parts but it wouldn't be expensive to replace, and my old M900 hasn't needed more than a rebuild in 20 years. They're pretty well-made.

[Chintan Jadwani]

Thank you all for the replies :) Now that I know of the RR, every time I am on an uphill and I have to push the gear to climb higher on the cassette I feel some justification for having a "low-normal" derailleur. 

Thanks also for clarifying that any of these will work well.

The RR will also hypothetically make life a little easier in introducing a friend to front and rear shifting- why does the same action push the bike to a higher gear in the front and lower gear in the rear (I forget too..)

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[Johnny Alien]

I have to think that most of the market for these is from the Rivendell fan base. I don't hear any other bike group talking about them at all. Because of that I kind of think IF Riv ends up bringing their new one to market the used scene will come WAY down. Just a theory. I really hope that I can test the theory (because they successfully release it)

[Bill Lindsay]

Johnny, you're probably right: Look at how cheaply we can buy Rene Herse Nivex rear derailleurs on the used market today...

;-)

BL in EC

[Peter Adler]

And another nitpicky point: The two-lever derailleur is connected not to a Simplex pullchain derailleur, but to the mid-50s fancy-bikeshorts pullchain derailleur from their rival, Huret: the Huret Louison Bobet, so named for the three-time Tour de France winner (1953-55) whose Stella team rode with that derailleur. Simplex had a competing design - the Juy 543 named for the company president/designer Lucien Juy and the fact that the derailleur could be set with a slide mechanism to work with 3-speed, 4-speed and 5-speed freewheels, at a time when all were current in the marketplace.

Like the Huret Louison Bobet, the Simplex Juy 543 had two cables. But instead of having a separate control lever for chain tension adjustment, the Simplex mechanism had a junction block which was clamped along the shift cable between the bottom bracket and the chainstay cable stop. The main pulley adjustment cable ran full from shift lever to derailleur, while a second cable stub was clamped to the first cable. The two adjustments this worked in parallel, which the chain tension automatically tightened/loosened as one shifted between bigger/smaller cogs.

The Simplex was an early example of black-boxing tech; the pullchain and slide mechanism were concealed from view (and from road scuzz, which I'm sure was Simplex's excuse) with a chrome cover plate. It's a sleeker, more modern-looking derailleur than most pullchain models.

All this engineering chozzerai must have been expensive to design and manufacture, and the price obviously discouraged mass appeal. My hunch is that the 1950s fixation on chain friction must also have been revealed to be silly. By the end of the decade, as Campagnolo was driving all the pullchain companies into irrelevancy in the racer market with a durable rear derailleur that as Frank Berto said, "didn't shift very well, but it would do it forever", and that didn't cater to the friction fixation at all. The ne plus ultra of Simplex's high-end pullchain derailleurs was the Juy 60, cosmetically a clone of the earlier 543 with the chrome cover plate, but with no freewheel selector (5-speed was assumed) and with no tension adjustment. After 1960, Simplex accepted that they'd lost the design war against Campagnolo's parallelogram derailleurs by building the excellent and beautiful Juy 61 Export (a design that clearly drove the designers at Suntour), and the technically similar/cosmetically uglier Raid 35, before going down the drain building derailleurs out of plastic.

===============

Frank Berto's discussion of the history of the companies in the 1950s in The Dancing Chain is, IMHO, far better than his discussion of the derailleurs themselves. Hs take on all the 50s derailleurs other than Campy's Gran Sport is mostly to call the design stupid, which they sort of are. They're fiddly to get working; placing the pulley cage under the big cog is a real balancing act, because the placement is done by adjusting the tension on that coil spring inside the ribbon spring, which I only discovered a few days ago by accident.

Berto's big objection is mostly to Simplex, who put the dual-spring cage in/cage  out mechanism at the centerpoint of the pulley cage. Many of Huret's derailleurs put it close to the end, which means that one could route the chain like a modern derailleur for more chainwrap, with the pulley cage near the spring and the tension cage below. The Simplex ones work pretty much the same regardless of which way the cage is oriented, with no additional takeup. Berto's belief is/was that Simplex had made a nice livelihood for themselves making single-pulley derailleurs, and didn't want to alienate their racing customers by making derailleurs that worked wildly differently. So they made single-pulley derailleurs with two pulleys.

Unfortunately for the hobbyist, Berto's contempt for the design means that he doesn't speak at all about making them work. 60+ years after they vanished from the marketplace, it's almost impossible to find any documentation on configuration, other than the original instructions included in the packages written in midcentury flowery French or English that's hard for most people (well, for me at least) to translate to instructions I can use. Most of the technicians who learned how to do it the official way BITD are now dead. Those of us who get them sorta-working mostly do so through dumb luck; my addition of a couple of extra links beyond the Shimano big-big +1 parallelogram measurement suddenly gained me the ability to reach 7 out of 10 gears, where I had only been able to do a single speed beforehand. A datapoint for the the tricks file.

Peter "wall of text!" Adler

Berkeley, California/USA

[Patrick Moore]

Ah, I mispoke; Huret indeed.

Peter knows much more about such pre-Campy parallelogram derailleur esoterica, and I for one am glad I haven't had to get such a rd to work since my 2-speed SA days, but I recall an old-timer on the CR list saying that they worked pretty well if they were properly set up, but that setup was very hard to do right. 

Peter, insofar as "low-normal" is the thread here and pullchain rds are low-normal, have you set one of these up, and can we see photos? Maybe it will give Grant some ideas.

It has been years since I read Dancing Chain; was he really so dismissive? I don't recall, but I'll have to borrow the book back from my brother.

Also recall someone -- CR lister? -- describing how in the late '40s and '50s in Australia race gearing was sparse (4 or 5 speeds), low (49 t sing ring, 14-20 4-speed), and cadences high; and, shifted with pull chain rds, the drivetrain often sounded like a coffee grinder -- I guess because it was hard to adjust these things well. 

I'm tempted to hunt one down and install it on that Libertas that (yes, Bill) I have plans to build up as a outside-lockable errand bike that is fun to ride. With wingnuts.

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[Bill Lindsay]

" that Libertas that (yes, Bill) I have plans to build"

blah blah blah.  I'll believe it when I see it.  

BL in EC

[John Dewey]

And the Rivendell ‘fan base’ is a subset of another and another so as to be mostly inconsequential. We do count, however and a few brave souls do sort-of OK serving us. 

Nevertheless, most of us (even here in RBW’s backyard) seldom cross paths with cyclists with whom we have anything in common other than two wheels. We’re already a bit abnormal and ‘low-normal’ makes us even more so. 

Jock (and his fleet of abnormal low-normals)

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[Chintan Jadwani]

Another question - from a couple of reviews here people seem indifference of the performance between low vs high normal. But online elsewhwre, there seems to be strong dislike for low normal - why is that? 

For example - disraeligears.co.uk writes for the xt m760

"The Shimano Deore XT (M760) is my absolutely least favourite Deore XT variant. It has cheap (rust prone) detailing, unnecessary styling and, worst of all, it’s low normal. not your obvious choice for slogging your way through the mud and grime of a British winter. Bring back stainless steel small parts, polished finishes and top normal operating logic."

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[Eric Marth]

Just wanted to pop in and say that if you're an eBay whiz and patient you can find rapid risers for not too much money. I've found two of the very nice Nexave T400s, both new, never used, for less than $30 each. There was a seller on eBay sometime in 2023 who listed a bunch of the T400s and another model of the Nexave for $25-$30 each, they were all new-old-stock. 

That said the XTR stuff always seems to run on the expensive side, rapid rise or otherwise. The LX and XT rapid risers are out there and a little cheaper. Another tip: if you can learn to visually ID a low-normal cage sometimes you can find derailers that are not listed as rapid rise by the seller and snag them for not as much money. 

Definitely agree with Johnny and Bill that Riv riders and readers and board members and Rivendell employees have been driving demand and therefore price. If Rivendell releases their own version and it lands in the $200 range I don't see that cooling the secondary market. 

[John Dewey]

@ http://disraeligears.co.uk/…well I suppose if you pedal around in a saltwater bath, like some of those unfortunate souls…that might happen. 

For those us who ride under sunny skies now and again—and take care of stuff properly—I can tell you that after years and years of working those mechs, never a mixed-up shift that wasn’t my doing and not even a microscopic spot of corrosion to be found anywhere. 

Total hooey I say. And I’ve got the goods to prove it 🤪

Jock

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[J J]

I'm 100 percent with Jock on this issue. It's hard to take the Disraeli Gears comments about the XT RD-M760 seriously, dripping as they are with dismissiveness. We've had long threads on this forum about low normal derailleurs before, and I still find the myths that circulate about Rapid Rise perplexing. For example, the myths that Rapid Rise performs "worse" than high normal, or it's harder to set up or index, or that (per the Disraeli Gears comments) it's somehow more prone to rust than other derailleurs in the same general series, like the XT M750,  built with the same material.

The reason I favor RR comes down to a shifting logic that works better for my brain and motor coordination than high normal. I shift in friction mode on all my bikes, which all have low normal rear ders. I like that I can move both levers in the same direction to get to higher/harder or lower/easier gears instead of moving oppositely. That's about it. I do think there are a few other benefits of RR: if my shift cable broke, the RR spring will push the derailleur to the easiest gear instead of the hardest, thus avoiding a potential high-gear slog home. But how often do cables break? RR also seems to shift more easily to lower/easier gears under load. But maybe this is a misattribution. Maybe I've simply gotten better about timing my shifts and floating the pedals. 

It does not mean that I have trouble with high normal shifting! To the contrary, high normal is just fine. Low normal is just a preference. What works great for Rapid Rise adherents won't necessarily work great for anyone else. Once you try RR, the possible outcomes will be that you like it, you hate it, or that you're more or less neutral about it. (You will also realize that one way or another, it is not earth shattering or life changing, nor will it make you a more skilled and faster rider). 

Any shifts I have missed or bungled are totally attributable to user error, to my timing or judgement, and not anything inherent to a high normal vs. low normal modality.

Finally, all Rapid Rise rear ders I have tried, from the humble end to the fancy XTRs, work beautifully. The differences between them are refinement level, materials, weight, looks, aesthetics, and so on, just like every other Shimano product categories that are stratified by price point.

[Richard Rose]

My only rapid rise - a beautiful Nexave courtesy of JJ - has made me a big fan. In particular, I am quite happy with my non rapid rise Deore unit on my Clem which gets lots of flatlander miles. But my Gus gets the singletrack hills. This is where the Nexave has one huge benefit. It takes zero effort to shift to an easier gear when I need it most. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 20, 2024, at 1:14 PM, J J <junes...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm 100 percent with Jock on this issue. It's hard to take the Disraeli Gears comments about the XT RD-M760 seriously, dripping as they are with dismissiveness. We've had long threads on this forum about low normal derailleurs before, and I still find the myths that circulate about Rapid Rise perplexing. For example, the myths that Rapid Rise performs "worse" than high normal, or it's harder to set up or index, or that (per the Disraeli Gears comments) it's somehow more prone to rust than other derailleurs in the same general series, like the XT M750,  built with the same material.

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[Chintan Jadwani]

Thanks all for your clarifications! Agree with the comments regarding the reliability of shimano components - I've usually had little reason to move on from my Altus/Acera RD except durability of the pulleys on the Acera perhaps. Shifted very well every time.

I have received a nice RD from a rbw member - thank you :)

chintan

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[Eric Marth]

Just wanted to stop by and say thanks to JJ for the general rapid rise write-up. I've already tested and made up my mind for myself but I think his post from Mar 20, 2024, 1:14:26 PM really does a nice job of breaking things down related to how these mechs work, how they might work for you, as well as some of the reasons we see such big differences in costs on the used market.

JJ knows! He's certainly owned and sold more RR derailers than any other forum member (that I'm aware of).