Rivendell - OM1 Rear Derailer - Silver - Reverse Action

Not that it matters, and not a reason to get one, but we’ve been working on this Opposite-Movement (OM) action for more than eight years. That’s how it goes when you’re a company of bicycle riders and not an industry big shot with a staff of specialists for each component. We had one big dead-end, and to make a long story short, instead of giving up, we got Microshift to make it. They looked at our prototypes and listened to the result we wanted, and said, essentially, “We can make it work if we do it our way” and that was proverbial music to our proverbial ears, and to use another cliché, we couldn’t be happier. It came out 99 percent perfect. The missing one percent is entirely theoretical/philosophical, but if we’d insisted on that they might have said, “You know what? Upon further reflection, do it yourselves.” 

And look at what’s out there in the real world. Compare it to those. 

Functionally, the SILVER OM-1 is perfect. Mechanically rock-solid. In the olde daze derailers came with all kinds of technical information that meant beans to most people, but was theoretically useful and actually interesting to some; and we’re happy to say we’ve got all of that and more on the fine and chunky box it comes in. Also inside the box is a cartoony booklet with more background and tips - you can find a digital copy here: Silver OM-1 User Guide.

For now, the bulk of what you need to know or might want to know: 

• Biggest cog it’ll shift to: 36t. 
• Cage Length: 77mm
• Pull ratio: 2:1
• Chain wrap capacity (explained on the box): 39t 
• Weight: +/- 220 gr., which is lighter than 98 percent of the derailers out there today. We weren’t shooting for light, but it came out embarrassingly light, anyway. 

The Shimano derailers were called “RapidRise,” and internet has no shortage of their critics. The critics are wrong.