This derailleur was amazingly innovative. It is a proper parallelogram design, mounting on the drop out, with a low gear stop screw. With all this technology it came on to the market 8 years before Campagnolo’s Gran Sport.
Why is it a forgotten irrelevance? Possibly because of a lack of marketing punch, and probably because it was a single pulley design - and so doomed to deliver a relatively sloppy change.
I know of four variations of this basic design:
- A bronze version branded Super JIC which has a cable adjuster and a relatively slim outer parallelogram arm.
- An aluminium version also branded Super JIC which also has a cable adjuster, but has a chubbier outer parallelogram arm.
- An aluminium version that is identical to the aluminium Super JIC, except that it has no cable adjuster and is unbranded and sold as the Super-Inax Sport.
- A steel version that is branded Super JIC and has a cable adjuster, but has a very different b-knuckle and a differently shaped pulley cage.
At one point or another, this design of derailleur seems to have been called JIC Champion Sport, Super-JIC 49, Super-JIC Sport, Super JIC Course or Super-Inax Sport. I have decided to run with just two of these: Super JIC Course and Super-Inax Sport.
Finally I would note that these derailleurs share a number of distinctive small parts with the earlier (and very weird) Super-Inax models with a b-pivot that allows movement in both the vertical and horizontal plane. They all clearly come from the same factory.
This is an example of the aluminium Super-Inax version described above. Some of its features are
- It has an aluminium b-knuckle with the top parallelogram pivot about 40mm below the b-pivot.
- It does not have a cable adjuster.
- The outer parallelogram arm is aluminium and is somewhat chubby, with no lightening hole drilled in the flange.
- The pulley wheel is 34mm in diameter.
- The pulley cage plates are relatively large.
- It has a rather dull silver/grey finish.
- It has no branding anywhere on it.
- Derailleur brands: Super-Inax, manufactured by JIC?
- Country: France
- Date of introduction: 1942?
- Date of this example: unknown
- Model no.: unknown
- Weight: 241g including hanger plate
- Maximum cog: 22 teeth?
- Total capacity: 8 teeth
- Pulley centre to centre: not applicable
- Index compatibility: friction
- Chain width: 3/32” and 1/8”?
- Logic: low normal
- B pivot: sprung
- P pivot: none
- Materials: aluminium rear knuckle and parallelogram arms, steel front knuckle, pulley cage plate and hanger plate.
Ref. 407