New Rene Herse Nivex Derailleur

[dddd]

Originally Posted by HTupolev

What are you referring to? On the RH Nivex, Heine is saying that the shifters are as light-action as practical. It doesn't sound like there's any deliberately-added friction on the indexed shifters.

If you mean with respect to Accushift "soft indexing", it's because that mode was a kludge. It was there because Shimano's 1984 indexing scheme was a huge hit, and SunTour launched their response before figuring everything out. The logic was that, if the mechanic couldn't get the indexing working very well and had to fall back to friction, the user would still have their shifts separated by clicks.
What's especially obnoxious is that many of the shifters only had the index and "soft-index" modes, with no pure friction option. Making them fairly useless to anyone who isn't setting up an Accushift drivetrain.

Glad that we're a good 30 years past all of that!

And you're right, seems this new Nivex uses soft indexing or friction, not both together (whew). Not sure how I read that into what was said, other than my previous interpretation of "soft indexing".
Just needs firm enough detents to control one's hand while riding over a moderately bumpy surface I guess.

Shimano got called out in legal procedings decades ago for requiring bike makers to buy complete drivetrain ensembles, but looking back it's clear that was perhaps most of the reason why their early indexing systems worked reliably on all of the new bikes that they got fitted to.

I'm sure that a lot of work went into this new derailer's design, even as the ancient examples clearly suggested how it should function. Getting all the pieces manufactured (perhaps a hundred or so sets of parts?) was no doubt another load of work as well.

[Mike V]

It has been around for a long time. Rene Herse derailleur is just updated materials.

[rwsaunders]

Anybody remember blasdelf (Fred) over at VSalon? I can see him having fun with the RH RD on one of his bikes.

[wallymann]

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site...erailleur.html

that design used a normal mech-mount and had the wonky linear motion design, so was still quite different...but it had 2 cables!

[bicycletricycle]

Originally Posted by Mike V

It has been around for a long time. Rene Herse derailleur is just updated materials.

This kind of point is made all the time but it just isn’t that interesting, almost everything has been around a long time and is just updated materials. It doesn’t really mean much.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by smontanaro

Nivex (and likely others) figured out long ago that the best way to overcome spring tension was to just ditch the spring. Jan and the Gang have just apparently just updated that style of derailleur for the 21st century.

Dual cable derailleurs have come and gone since before and after the Nivex derailleur. They typically only appear for a short time before they disappear again. There are multiple disadvantages, the main one of which is that you now have to have two complete cable paths. They also are more prone to freeplay (slop) in the mechanism, as you have to keep both cables taut. The return spring system is simpler in many ways: You only need a single cable; the spring keeps the cable taut and removes freeplay and slop.


One might note that the one of the first indexed shifting systems, Shimano Positron, had a dual cable system. For the next iteration, called Positron II, then used a single cable.

[bicycletricycle]

2 cable systems have nice advantageous though. More tolerant of friction in the cables and reduced shift lever pressure. The slop problem isn’t a huge deal as long as the system has some adjustment but it and with downtube shifters the addition of the 2nd cable path really isn’t a big deal.

It is true that in the end single cable systems won out. For a couple decades the only dual able system has been rohloff.

Originally Posted by Mark McM

Dual cable derailleurs have come and gone since before and after the Nivex derailleur. They typically only appear for a short time before they disappear again. There are multiple disadvantages, the main one of which is that you now have to have two complete cable paths. They also are more prone to freeplay (slop) in the mechanism, as you have to keep both cables taut. The return spring system is simpler in many ways: You only need a single cable; the spring keeps the cable taut and removes freeplay and slop.


One might note that the one of the first indexed shifting systems, Shimano Positron, had a dual cable system. For the next iteration, called Positron II, then used a single cable.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by Mike V

It has been around for a long time. Rene Herse derailleur is just updated materials.

It's actually kind of a backward step. The Suntour S1 chainstay mounted derailleur (from 30 years ago) incorporated a slant parallelogram and shifted well enough to be fully indexing capable.

[bicycletricycle]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

It's actually kind of a backward step. The Suntour S1 chainstay mounted derailleur (from 30 years ago) incorporated a slant parallelogram and shifted well enough to be fully indexing capable.

Hard to tell in the pics but the RH derailleur seems to have some slant as well.

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by bicycletricycle

my chapman rando bike might get one of these when it goes in for a refresh some day. Might change the brakes at the same time.

What brakes do you have now and what would you switch to?

Greyfox

[peanutgallery]

Fat chance of that happening, Rivendell already holds the patent

Originally Posted by Buzz Killington

I’m holding out for the Rene Herse Buggy Whip. And TV antenna with included needle nose pliers to turn channels with.

[Jah_Gorb]

Are they also selling a shifter?

[charliedid]

Originally Posted by Eli Bingham

Jan should send those with every order.

[marciero]

He has a point about the design of modern deraileurs being based on a permanent implementation- the hanger- of what was essentially a hack.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by meyatt

$750 for something that looks like a medieval french cooking device

I appreciate anyone willing to take a step back and ask why things are done the way they are and trying something different, but seems to suggest mechanical groupsets will end up mostly all looking and functioning alike or auteur 'classic car' pieces.

Gotta agree...and that $729 doesn't include the very unique frame required to even mount the thing...

It’s worth noting that the Nivex requires a special braze-on under the chainstay and can’t be mounted on standard derailleur hangers.

OR the $249 shifter...yikes.

Rene Herse also sells the matching shifter ($249) in corresponding configurations for index shifting or pure friction shifting.

To say this market is small, is quite the understatement.