At first glance the Walter is just a plastic derailleur from Eastern Europe -where they loved that kind of thing. Look closer and you find one of the most remarkable derailleurs in this collection. Sure, it is clearly a development of the Favorit Special, but this is no knock-off, this is a labour of love.

For a start the Walter weighs 134 grams - and this is no diminutive item - it is a full-size, even beefy design. The Allen key bolts, the pulley bolts, the nuts on the pulley bolts and the pivots with the cable fittings are all aluminium, and beautifully machined aluminium at that. The cable nipple fits in the derailleur, with the Allen key cable clamp built into the rather nicely made levers. The pulley wheels are plastic, but have a high quality ball bearing race inside them. The whole thing can be disassembled for maintenance, with decent sized circlips on the parallelogram pivots.

A couple of different correspondents have told me that their Walter derailleurs had faithfully served them for many thousands of kilometers.

Brilliant.

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• Derailleur brands: Walter
• Country: Czech Republic - Czechoslovakia at the time
• Date of introduction: 1990?
• Date of this example: unknown
• Model no.: unknown
• Weight: 134g
• Maximum cog: 28 teeth?
• Total capacity: 24 teeth?
• Pulley centre to centre: 46mm
• Index compatibility: friction
• Chain width: 3/32”
• Logic: top normal
• B pivot: unsprung
• P pivot: sprung
• Materials: plastic with mainly aluminium small parts