My experience with front derailleurs is very likely less than Guy’s, but such as it is it confirms Guy’s experience: narrow-cage road “racing” fds worked fine for me for wide-range “1x + granny” ring setups, this even with subcompact cranksets. My 2 or 3 Dura Ace 7400-series fds (I can’t recall which #s in the series) worked fine with:
38/24 Sugino XD2 9 speed (Fargo) (with outer cage about 1/2” above 38 t ring); Bontrager Race Lite triple crankset with pipe axle; forget exact tooth count, but perhaps 44/34/24 (cut off outer throw stops on 2 of them to allow shifting to the big ring); 42/28 Ritchey Logic double; 44/28 Ritchey Logic double. I might even have used one of these with a TA Pro 5 Vis 44/24, long ago, but my memory doesn’t go back that far clearly. Point is that narrow cage racing front derailleurs work with a lot more than 52/42 or 53/39 racing cranksets. Not only have I not used racing front derailleurs with as many different non-racing combinations as Guy has, I’ve not done this for nearly as long as he has, since my first mis-use of such a racing fd with a non-stock racing crank/drivetrain started in the aughts (many years riding fixed on road). On Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 8:54 PM Guy Jett <[email protected]> wrote: > …. Having said that I’ve run old narrow inner plate "racing" fronts on > chainsets with 20, 19, and 17 tooth differences for around 50 years with > few problems. These include TA Cyclotourists of 50-45-26 and 49-46-26, and > Sugino of 44-41-24. > > An original Huret Jubilee front ran for awhile on the 49-46-26 TA but was > replaced by a SunTour Cyclone (which broke at the mount), then by a SunTour > Superbe. In 2010 the Superbe migrated to my Hilson with the 44-41-24 > Sugino and has run perfectly ever since. The "delicate" Jubilee went back > on the 49-46-26 TA which was just changed to the 50-45-26 chainset and > still runs strong. > > I need the narrow inner plate because of the 3- and 5-tooth differences in > the "granny-spaced" larger rings. A wide inner plate hits the middle ring > before it can shift to the large. A problem you won't have. > > Bottom line is you can pick just about any front derailleur you like. > Just don't replay the error that broke your Athena. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgtkGqPMp0wpjC-652WBK05OWMZf8Hx1_oX0oh%3DwKTDtkg%40mail.gmail.com.
