Shimano AX Deraillers advantages of?

I've always liked the clean look of the Shimano AX components especially the AX 600 and AX Dura Ace deraillers. I know from other posts here that the reason that the Shimano AX series of deraillers (and groupsets)died ot was because of the introduction of a decent Index Shifting system by Shimano. One thing that I like about the AX stuff was the lack of outer cable housing on the real derailler. I've often wondered how an AX rear derailler would work with modern STI shifters. I figure the fine tuning of the cable cold be done via the adjusters that are fastened to the downtube in place of the downtube shifter levers.

Would an AX rear derailler (on a suitabe frame) with STI shifters be a give that much poorer shifting than a modern derailler?

Cheers

On 1/19/2014 10:34 AM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
I've always liked the clean look of the Shimano AX components especially the AX 600 and AX Dura Ace deraillers. I know from other posts here that the reason that the Shimano AX series of deraillers (and groupsets)died ot was because of the introduction of a decent Index Shifting system by Shimano. One thing that I like about the AX stuff was the lack of outer cable housing on the real derailler. I've often wondered how an AX rear derailler would work with modern STI shifters. I figure the fine tuning of the cable cold be done via the adjusters that are fastened to the downtube in place of the downtube shifter levers.

Would an AX rear derailler (on a suitabe frame) with STI shifters be a give that much poorer shifting than a modern derailler?


Highly unlikely.

Besides cable travel/ lateral movement ratio[1], index
shifting is enhanced greatly by slant parallelogram changer
body, floating top pulley, dual pivot springs besides
bushingless chain and shaped sprockets. There are other
important if not critical aspects:
http://www.yellowjersey.org/sisend.html

[1]Guys modify the ratio of older changers in various ways
with usually dismal results because that's only one of many
significant factors in a system.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971