I don't agree with the Disraeli article, maybe the first year or two of those Mountechs and of the Superbe Tech, had issues, but I know the later years, the ones I've got, have had ZERO issues, and remember the one Superbe Tech I have has over 150,000 miles on it, if there was a problem with the design it would have reared its ugly head years and miles ago. Nothing has ever bent, and the weird thing is, you won't believe this, but the Superbe Tech with the 150,000 miles has NEVER had the jockey wheels replaced, and they're not cracked to this day.
The problem with those derailleurs was the issue of dirt, they didn't like dirt, so I kept mine very clean and made sure all the pivots and bearings were well lubed, I have always used Tri-Flow for all my components and cables, just not on the chain because technology has improved with chain lube.
I have never used the Huret Duopar derailleur, nor ever known anyone who had one, that is how rare they were, at least in the USA. Could the Duopar shift better? Hmmm, all I can say is that a lot of people raced on Campy Nuovo Record back in the day, and I still have a bike with Nuovo Record, and Suntour Superbe Tech shifts better, thus I would be inclined to think that Mountech would shift at least as well as Duopar if not better, but I could be wrong.
My Mountech was built probably in 84 maybe 85 because it came original from the factory on a 85 Schwinn Le Tour Luxe, so it is a later model, but based on my experience the Mountech did not destroy Suntour. Shimano destroyed Suntour by first coming out with SIS, or index shifting, Suntour was left scrambling to come up with their version of index shifting, and the first derailleurs were object failures! That failure is what got Suntour on a slippery slope to doom. Suntour was a very small company, Shimano was a giant company, they built all their cycling components whereas Suntour got some of their stuff from Dia Comp and renamed it, Shimano was also huge into fishing gear. This all meant that Shimano had a large research and development operation that dwarfed Suntour, Suntour was hopelessly lost against such a giant, and once the patent ran out on the Suntour slant parallelogram derailleur design Shimano jumped on it and incorporated the design in their derailleurs, that was the nail that closed the coffin. Other things helped doom Suntour, and all this crap sort of happened in 10 years of hell period, the yen devalued in the mid-'80s, the slant parallelogram patent ran out, index shifter failure, bad news about the Tech series of derailleurs, sales dropped off to just 5%...yeah, you get the picture.
Personally, this is tough to say, but I think the bad news about the Tech series was propaganda perpetrated by Shimano! That propaganda was repeated over and over and over by others in the industry so much so that it became a "fact". I know people who have had those Tech derailleurs personally, as well as on forums, and not one person has ever said anything negative about them, well if they were such junk then people who used them personally would be shouting hate for those derailleurs, but none of that is happening even almost 40 years of still being used! That is why I believe it was a smear campaign started by Shimano to try to put Suntour out of business, and it worked along with other factors.
