Explain Campag to me….

I’ve just swapped from Campag Carbon Chorus to Shimano Ultegra and don’t regret it. I was never really happy with Campag for a number of reasons-

– The shift buttons are in a strange place, like Shimano Sora, and it’s nowhere near as intuitive as the alternatives.

– The shift levers, even on Chorus, feel VERY cheap- very nasty plastic that’s actually very easy to break (I’ve seen this happen a lot on Athena).

– The gear shift is very clunky, it’s not a nice clunk like Sram, it’s very agricultural.

– It’s a lot more fussy than Shimano with set up.

– Minor parts are very specific, unbelievably expensive (unique chainring bolts for your carbon cranks sir? That’ll be £40 please, and no, we don’t have any in stock).

– Parts availability is dreadful- ordering minor bits for customers through Chickens often takes weeks, if not months, if you need something small. Also, spares for older stuff (9 speed and below) are near non-existant unless you’re willing to wait for them to come for Italy, again, taking a very, very long time.

On the plus side, their crank design is by far the best and I quite liked the brakes. It also looked a lot nicer on my bike (steel, Italian), although I think it looks awful on a lot of modern carbon bikes. But there were a lot of little things that nagged at me, and, having learnt from other customer’s mistakes when they were left without a bike for months waiting for a tiny part, I thought I’d move over to Shimano and don’t regret it at all.

Wierd.
Just above. The little lever is in the wrong place?! No its not, its spot on and at least the brake lever doesn’t move.
Campag parts hard to find??
Ever tried to mend an A STi?
My main objection the Shimano is based around the trend that the modern world has that its ok to build in redundancy with new parts and special tools. I nwould buy a Campag chain either by the way. Nasty visuals as well. Just look at those road chainsets. Designed by a committee of 3 years olds and olympic planners! Compare with a classic Record version.

Sorry missed a bit. Can you buy an internal spring for a STI?

surely the whole point is that if you need the appeal explaining then its not for you same goes if you have to ask the price innit…

I can see the appeal its just the logical part of my brain over rules and shimano’s broader compatibility and availability at lower price points seem to win out…

I have to laugh at all this talk about Campag being Italian as almost all of it is made in Romania these days….

Buy it because you like it, but not because you think you are getting want an Italian groupset to match your Italian sorry Taiwanese Bianchi 😉

… and it goes well with my Polish Fiat 500 😉

Some love Shimano/Campag/SRAM
Some hate Shimano/Campag/SRAM
Some choose on what they like

I like SRAM.

Shimano? Feels too vague when shifting for me. Also, don’t really get on with the shape of the hoods. Otherwise, yeah, it’s OK.

Campag? That stupid thumb lever. FFS. Get rid of it, would you? It doesn’t work on the drops for anyone with normal hands. Oh, and it’s over priced for what it is (Romanian mass-produced, as mentioned above). The equivalent SRAM or Shimano tends to be cheaper and just work better for me.

SRAM? Just works for me. I like the feeling of the shifting, I like the shape of the hoods, I like the way it’s all priced and put together.

Ever tried to mend an A STi?

Dunno, I bought some DA off someones old race bike and it’s been on mine for the last 3 years. Before that I had Tiagra, which lasted 7 years, untill I sold them and they still get used daily by my neighbour on his commuter.

surely the whole point is that if you need the appeal explaining then its not for you

Nope, the point is when judged objectively some of it is poor in function. Like I said, I borrowed a bike equipped with Veloce to see if I could physically ride a road bike after 20yrs of exclusively riding MTB (spinal problem stopped me riding HTs let alone road bikes). No preconceptions, no purchase justification. The whole road bike experience was alien, but the clunky clumsy poor shifting did much to ruin it. I’d never had any MTB gearing work as badly. Riding a bike with 105 was a revelation. I have since bought one (fitted with 105) and have got “into” road riding. I appreciate the heritage of Campag and long-established european brands, am not a fan of the redundancy/planned obsolescence/non-serviceability of Shimano, but I have been put of using or owning campag full stop.

I’d be interested to try Sram, and competition is better than monopoly.

For campag though theres no point having an entry-level group set if it deters entry.

edit: bristol, bust link brings me back to this page in some internet-breaking loop?

Campagnolo hirth joint is why it’s better than shitmano

Crftom…how is that a reason?

I have some campag stuff but they’ve always been copiers and shimano the innovators.

I have some campag stuff but they’ve always been copiers and shimano the innovators.

not exactly true,

Who invented the Quick Release?

Who invented the slant parallelogram rear mech?

Who released the first electronic gears?

End of the day, they all work, just go with what feels comfortable. It isn’t the case now where pros are polishing rear mechs because they don’t like what they’re given to ride.

Indexing, hyperglide, sti, OS BB axle dual pivot…

bottom bracket, have you ever looked at Magic Motorcyles, Bullseye, etc. I seem to remember TIoga Revolvers were over sized, Bontrager had a working prototype welded over sized BB.

hyperglide, well it was an advance on Uniglide, but yes i believe it was shimano.
Sti, if you mean combined shifter then it was one solution,
Dual pivot, ever seen a Weinman dual pivot? shimano works but not the first.

If your talking about innovation how about Biopace?

I use Campag becuase because I love the shifters (hood size and lever arrangement are perfect for my hands), the FD trims (SRAM does this as well) and gear shift is easier to use. I dislike the flappy brake lever that shimano use, it feels wrong to me and I find SRAM double tap easy to misshift up instead of down or visa versa.

Oh and Campag’s kit is pretty. Shimano’s cranks are just ugly and SRAM’s cranks are too in your face with there grahics but that again as with the above is personal preference.

Shimano are hardly the inovators folk make them out to be. They have come up with a few new things but there real sucess is marketing and market pentration. Everyone copies each other in the bicycle world. There were egg shaped ring 100 years before Shimano made Biopace. In the 1890’s some one was playing with suspension bikes. Suntour and Mavic did electronic shifting before Campag/shimano did it.

Shimano’s indexing for the rear is a genuine inovation, shame they applied it the front where it’s not needed.

Use what ever system you perfer, they all work well.

To the guy put off campag by trying veloce, it is there entry level kit. I use and it’s fine for me, shifting is a bit clunky sometimes (mostly it’s quite slick but not 105 standard) but on the whole it is fine. If you try there higher end groups set things get better like going from sora to 105.

I can’t believe you’ve all got this far without mentioning Campag wheels.

Campag wheels are awesome.

Now also available with Shimano freehub bodies! Just for reference though, you can’t gouge an aluminium Campag freehub body, because the spline has been engineered deep enough.

I use SRAM offroad, Shimano onroad. Never understood the massive amounts of vitriol people pour on groupsets. If it works for you, great, if it doesn’t get something else.

I didnt realise Campag did mtb groupsets??

Bikewhisperer, they sell them under the fulcrum brand to presumably get away from the groupset rivalry. Got some Racing 7s on other halfs bike and as budget system wheels go they are at least as good as my aksiums.

I didnt realise Campag did mtb groupsets??

not for a long time, Record Or, Olympus and Centaur, they also had a range of rims, Atex, Mirox, may have been others can’t remember.

The campag cantilevers looked very graftonesqe and the thumbshifters were tiny.

Compact drive, i believe the chainrings used the same spline as the sprockets, rather than bolts.

Campag Euclid 1991

And the others:

http://www.campyonly.com/catalogs/1991.html

So at the risk of a couple of the guys here rolling thier eyes, I’m looking at 2 italian bikes. One is Campag Veloce, the other Shimano Ultegra.

The latter is £100 more expensive (£1450 vs £1550).

Worth paying the extra?

For £100 I’d go Ultegra over Veloce. That’s a 2nd from top Shimano gruppo against the 5th level Campy. Now if it was Centaur/Athena vs Ultegra….mmmm.

kryton have you learnt anything?

Simply to many unknown variables too answer your question, even before one takes personal opinion into account.

bikewhisperer – Member
I can’t believe you’ve all got this far without mentioning Campag wheels.

Campag wheels are awesome.

Now also available with Shimano freehub bodies! Just for reference though, you can’t gouge an aluminium Campag freehub body, because the spline has been engineered deep enough.

I think you’ll find Shimano make no alu freehub bodies, it’s been the market dominance of their system that has created this problem as other companies have used alu freehubs to get the weight down. Only AC ha a half decent solution beyond Dura Ace’s ti freehub.

Inflatable saddles

cynic-al – Member
kryton have you learnt anything?

I want a carbon bike. I actually found a 3rd option.

So now practically speaking, its a White Bianchi with 105 or Black Bianchi with Ultegra, £200 price difference, both with Turquoise highlights.

Or a Campag Veloce Cinelli…

Help! (Lol!)

I want a carbon bike…

both with Turquoise highlights.

Answers to my question…

But my advice? – high end Italian stuff is overpriced tat, go Bianchi.

http://www.podiumcafe.com/2010/8/25/1649602/fall-from-grace-by-freddy-maertens

“Take, for instance, the 1973 World Championships, which Maertens describes thus: “although I wouldn’t say it was the greatest disappointment of my career I would definitely say it deserves the title of the most sordid machination ever practiced on me.” The race, he says, was less about the struggle between rival riders and more about the “the commercial power struggle between two rival cycle component manufacturers. On the one side was the established Italian make, Campagnolo, and on the other side was the Japanese firm, Shimano, which was trying to win a slice of the European market.” According to Maertens, the day before the race he overheard the head of Campag telling his compatriot and Flandria team-mate Walter Godefroot “At all costs Shimano must not win on Sunday.” Guess which groupset Flandria rode? Yup, you guessed right: Shimano.

Three laps out from the finish, it was Merckx and Maertens in their Belgium jerseys riding a breakaway with Spain’s Luis Oca?a (fresh from success in the Tour) and Italy’s Felice Gimondi. Like Merckx, Gimondi was riding Campag gears. Oca?a rode Zeus. Maertens decided that helping Merckx win would be the wisest move – he recalled what happened to fellow Belgian Benoni Beheydt after he beat Rik Van Looy in 1963. “I was too young for anything like that. Imagine how the Belgian people would have reacted to it. If I had wanted to see serious doubts cast on the healthy progress of my future cycling career, all it would have needed was for me to do such a thing.”

So Maertens led Merckx out in the sprint. Merckx instructed him to go early. Only Merckx – Maertens says – had blown up and didn’t have a sprint in his legs. Gimondi had no difficulty coming around them both and taking the title: “Only then did I realise that I had been knifed in the back by Merckx and that because his own chance had gone he would have rather seen the Italian win on a Campagnolo-equipped bike than me.””

cynic-al – Member

I want a carbon bike…

both with Turquoise highlights.

Answers to my question…

But my advice? – high end Italian stuff is overpriced tat, go Bianchi.

I though Bianchi was Italian?

I’m also guessing that (currently happily using Tiagra), saving £200 by going 105 isn’t a massive detrement to performance? Although I guess if you were buying 1 bike you might buy the best at the time of purchase I guess… But also white bikes are faster right? 🙂

So, white Carbon Bianchi Sempre 105 for £1365?

(Cynic-al, somwething that I didn’t tell you is that in the last week I bought some 4ZA aero wheels off the classifieds – they’ll fit on the Bianchi’s but not the Cinelli of course……)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAe6JtowkXo

http://www.campyonly.com/history.html

Wtf.

I’ve been reading lots of Campag Veloce reviews and they are positive, in fact some mention a class up on 105.

??

it might be worth adding that having recently ridden a bike with what I think was 2009 veloce, those shifters are indeed horrible. The upshift (easier gear at the back) is so vague – worse than any Shimano I’ve ever used even!

The good news is that previous and more recent campag (including veloce) isn’t like that and has the lovely Campag definite shifting.

I treid some cheap ergo with plastic levers, they were almost useless, how campag sell them with a straight face I don’t know. Not sure if they’re veloce tho.

those were xenon. ime they actually worked passably but not a patch on proper brakes.

I am referring to the 2011 Campag Veloce 10 speed.

whatever they were, shimano never sold anything so shite!

tis true. campag’s desperate attempt to get on low end bikes…