Originally Posted by
bruce19
I actually bought those Athena indexed shifters and they were, as you said, useless. I was going to replace the original friction shifters with them. But, my original friction shifters were labeled Athena. I had Branford Bike in Branford, CT put it all together for me. It was all Campy including the wheels. I even had those weird Campy water bottles that had a handle. And, yes, it was around '88-89. Oh, FWIW, those friction shifters were the smoothest shifters I've ever had on a bike.
I picked up a mid 80's Colnago last year with the original Victory friction shifting groupset. Found it balky, dead feeling and poor shifting. The classic over-shift and then adjust back. Stripped the whole bike down and serviced everything. New cables, modern housings, etc. I even took the DT shifters apart, cleaned them all up and metal polished everything. Those parts went from one of my worse working setups to pretty much the best. Every bit as precise, smooth feeling and tactile as my Superbe Pro setup on the Opus III. I think a good service and proper setup goes a long way on the Campagnolo stuff.
I had fought a RD ghost shifting problem on my one Lemond that has a indexing shifting Campagnolo 8 speed Record setup. Turned out to be nothing but the wrong g springs someone had put in the shifters. I originally replaced them with the new wrong g springs as the majority on the various forums were saying the g springs were the same as used in the Ergo Levers. Once a true Campagnolo expert spoke up and provided the right part number for the correct G springs all ghost shifting problems disappeared. Now it works as well as any of the Shimano indexing setups I have although the fell is "heavier". Never lets me down though, just click, shift.