bikemig 

Then I'd have to buy a frame to hang the parts on,

Are you selling a group?

horatio 

I would if I bought the bike it’s hung on.

Just checked fleeBay and only found a few ‘73 DA bits: couple RDs and brake caliper sets. One headset. One FD cage. No cranksets. One set of brake levers.

The calipers do look nice, as do the RDs.

embankmentlb

Think back to the 70’s. The world was very different from today. Bike shops were only in big cities or perhaps college towns
Mail order from a print catalog sometimes took months. If you were into serious training and racing Campy was what you wanted. It could be ridden and abused for tens of thousands of miles and never let you down. Campy earned that reputation.

As the world grew smaller through the 1980’s and 90’s things became easier to come by. Things like shifting quality began to be more important than pure dependability.

If you want what the weekend riders with disposable income used go DA.

If you want to ride what real hard core racers living the dream used go NR.

horatio 

No bike shops near me when I was a kid, living in the boonies of SC, but there was a Schwinn dealer (also a Honda motorcycle dealer) about 30 miles from my home. Dad would occasionally go and look at the Hondas, and I would tag along. That’s how I got my first “road bike”, a yellow Schwinn Continental. It was too large for me, but I just had to have it. I paid $100 for it, of my own money. It was great fun for awhile, but none of my friends had a 10-speed, so my interests turned to Hondas. I thought I had a quality bike. Lol I had no clue. My life could have been a lot different if I had.

seypat

Question to the OP. Why include just those 2 groups? You have a bunch of members on here that raced and rode back in the day. They can give you the complete story. Maybe people ran mixed components till they no longer could. I bought a bike last year from a local that raced back in the day. It was an 1972 English bike that originally came with NR. The PO had upgraded it through the years. He said he couldn't afford Campy at the time. Replacement parts were 1gen DA brakes and Suntour barcons/derailleurs/freewheel. In 87, he had the rear spread and upgraded the whole group. He said he couldn't afford either Campy or DA, so he went with a complete Shimano 6200 group and different rims. When I bought the bike, I also got a box of parts with all of the original parts plus every part that had been on the bike since then. One of those parts is a 57T Campy chainring that the PO used in TTs. It was a major score.

horatio 

It was just this particular bike that piqued my curiosity, since it was spec’d with NR and Italian bits in the catalog. I’m aware that dealers will substitute parts and sell the take-offs for better profit margins. Perhaps that it how this bike became outfitted that way. If I ever speak to the owner I will find out.

I’d love to hear from folks who mixed product lines, and what, other than cost, prompted them to do it.

wrk101

Deleted my earlier comment as I think the Dr is right. The early DA, in great shape, particularly the anodized black version, bring serious, similar to Campy $$.

rccardr 

(shrugs shoulders)
Not talking about what is posted or asked, but what has been actually paid for or available at a specific price.
Last NOS/NIB DA group offered to me was $860. And not that long ago.
Last set of new hubs, with cogs and skewers I personally sold was under $100.

P!N20

From Disraeli Gears:

Frank Berto caustically comments that the Campagnolo Nuovo Record rear derailleur shifted poorly, but was so well constructed that it would keep on shifting exactly as poorly - forever.

Salamandrine 

Hmm, I remember this same conversation from 1979.

The people worried about their poor shifting were long dropped an hour into the club ride. Everybody at the front was running all Campy, maybe a Superbe bit here and there.

63rickert

The pro-Shimano arguments feel like they are mostly about some animus against Campagnolo. Somehow bike parts more than 50 years old still get people all riled up.

Nuovo Record was introduced 1967. Nothing new at all except the brakes. The derailleurs were a modest re-do of a 1953 design. The cranks a modest revision of a 1958 design. Hubs and post and pedals and headset were just bike parts. The hubs did include QRs which were a Campy design of 1927-1936. All old old stuff. Bike parts. But bike parts that make some angry.

Biggest difference between old old Campy and old old Shimano is the Campy parts show handwork in every detail. Is that bad? That level of handwork was already obsolete in '67 and really archaic by end of line in '83. Or '87 or '88 or whenever the final leftovers were sold. Most collectors of old stuff in any domain tend to like handmade, in bikes it is this endless source of squabbling.

Bad Lag

The Shimano chrome has not survived the decades anywhere near as well as the Campagnolo chrome - not even close. This is evident on all the chrome plated bits on my brake calipers and my quick release skewers.

The Shimano brakes do not have that rubber o-ring around the barrel adjuster. What they do have is a serrated surface that kills your paint the first time the fork swings that way. Yes, this pissed me off when it hit my new paint job. Performance of the two brakes is comparable.

My Dura Ace hubs I have too many miles on them to count. They are still functionally perfect but the chrome plating is shot.

The Dura Ace freewheel I bought is still on the bike I ride today. It's 45 years old just like the bike. It is the best freewheel body I own. I have a good selection of cogs for it. IF it ever dies, I will be very saddened.

I like the Nuovo Record rear derailleur more than the Crane. I had both and a Crane GS. I removed the Crane less than a year after installing it. Heck, I like the Nuovo Record more than the Suntour, too. I may be in a tiny minority on this point.

BFisher

Interesting to hear from you guys who raced with these parts when they were the hot tickets. The discussion of value provides helpful information.

Some of the rest of the discussion unfortunately veers off and follows the same old Campy vs Shimano, pick a side line of thinking. Why not enjoy both?

The comments about NR shifting poorly seem greatly exaggerated, in my experience. Keep in mind, I consider myself a riding novice. I run one over a 14-24 6-speed freewheel and it shifts like butter. Yeah the pulleys cracked and I replaced them with Shimano's because that's what I had. It's a plastic wear item from 1979, for cripes sake! Ramped cogs and a "Z" chain and if anything's going to bungle a shift, it's the rider. Frank Berto's assessment means absolutely nothing to me. YMMV. I don't expect it to shift my 32-tooth Suntour freewheel. That would be irrational. It wasn't designed for that. I have a bike for that. I ride the Campagnolo-equipped bike where my legs can take it, and it's a blast! Heck, I live on a hill that's about a 16% grade. Coming home is always a chore,

As for Shimano, they have nothing left to prove. You like them or you don't. Nothing wrong with that. Competition is a good thing. The great thing about the world of cycling is that we have choices - lots of 'em!

Ride on!

seypat

One could argue that if not for Simplex's decision to use Delrin, you might be including French parts in your discussion. The high end French parts were/are every bit as good as Campy and DA. At least to me they are.

Last ride 76 

Sorry I wasn't clear. Shows my implicit Campy bias... I was referring to prices for Campy NIB...

I think you said that NIB early DA prices vs NR are roughly the same. I disagree. My comment was not referring to the DA prices which I don't really know anything about, but Campy NR of which I had a few pieces. Looking at recently "Sold" on ebay...I'm still on the low side.
Best regards, Eric

My apologies for not being clear in pointing out there is a price differential that still exists between them.

horatio 

Mavic had a killer RD in the late 80s, right? And if IIRC, weren’t Mavic the first to produce electronic shifting? Were they just ahead of their time?

T-Mar

The one Simplex piece that found it's way onto a LOT of Campagnolo NR equipped bicycles was the retro-friction shift lever set. And the aluminum SLJ derailleur was no slouch. Certainly better than NR. I even found the Huret Jubilee better than NR, in shifting performance, though it's weight weenie design was cause for reliability after a crash.

Last ride 76 

Early DA vs NR? Agreed no contest, at the time, but not the way you mean it. The NR RD shifted just fine on close tooth arrangement freewheels. I never ran bigger than a 23 BITD, and I was considered a hill climber, in the NE. Pulleys cracked when? Sure C&V folks complain, but in the 1970's? I don't recall the steel headsets having problems, mine certainly didn't and spent plenty of time on unpaved Vermont roads going hard. Crank spiders developed issues over time, true but again '70s cranks functioned well for years. Hubs? You're complaining about Record hubs??? Finding long reach brakes? In the '70s "long" reach brakes were easy to come by. Most of your criticisms seem to be about NR well after it's race winning years. My NR Ron Cooper always got me to the finish line, if I didn't flat or crash so badly that my wheels were pretzels. I don't think it's reasonable to look at performance racing equipement with the idea it was to last decades.

Now, if you were to judge SR vs just about any other top of the line equipment that existed concurrently, I would probably not argue, (as much as I love SR). Not much actual innovation or mechanical improvement over NR, and the huge ti flop..... This was supposed to be improvement over parts mostly designed in the 1960's. An absolute marketing marvel, that SR stuff was!

Road Fan

One of the things I got from Berto's assessments in his "Upgrades" book is that tooth shape has a lot to do with shifting quality, because it controls how fast the chain will be picked up by the sprocket. With that in mind I installed Shimano and Sachs ARIS freewheels on my 1980 Masi GC and a few other C&V friction bikes, and found a huge improvement without changing out any of their original Nouvo Record derailleurs or Record 52/42 chainsets, with the original Regina and Everest chains, though 7 speeds worked better. I tried to tune them up for some 13/28 use, but that was IMHO outside the capability of the NR basic hardware.

In addition, in its day (for me 1969 through mid-70s), NR was the best you could get for strenuous racing under the strongest riders in the world. At that time Shimano was just getting out of the "cheap bike" category, and the first good brake from them appeared in Chicago at shops like Turin in about 1972, best recollection I have. I liked having that confidence in the durability, stability and performance in that niche. And that it was designed to withstand stress and abuse far greater than I was going to subject it to. And the lightest system! I knew it was not suitable for real touring, but I didn't do none o' that. I still look back and think NR is the best choice for a vintage Masi or classic Raleigh International or Professional (or the likes). I would not say it's a competitor against more modern touring-focussed components or component sets, and indexing places NR in the "can't win" category. I also think most of the Campy indexing designs are really good, and I prefer them to Shimano. Some of that preference is just ergonomics.

Salamandrine 

What hasn't been noted yet is that Dura Ace was IIRC not the main competitor for Campy among the top tier components. I don't have sales figures so I can't say for certain, but that's what I remember.

Most people that chose to run alternative Japanese parts picked Sugino cranks, Cyclone or Superbe derailleurs and brakes, maybe some Phil hubs - a mixed set. Dura Ace was kind of the third wheel. That's not even counting the French stuff, which remained popular into the early 80s.

Oh, and NR jockey wheels did not crack, ever. Maybe they crack now, 40+ years later, as does pretty much all plastic that old.

noglider 

No, it was after I returned from Boston to NYC. It was Toga Bike Shop which still exists but has new owners. RIP, Lenny Preheim.

Bad Lag

I look at this from a different perspective and derive a different conclusion.

One main benefit of owning and USING Campagnolo NR equipment was the availability of replacement parts. Had any of it failed (rare but did happen), it could easily be repaired. This was important for a cash-strapped kid. The proof of this is the fact my bike still has NR on it 45 years later. Shimano replacement parts didn't exist.

You can still buy NOS NR replacement parts and you can still buy components 50 years later.

crank_addict

I concur and mentioned earlier. There wasn't much to gain using early gen Dura Ace. The derailleurs also weighed more than Campy. Suntour was the go to replacement and a bargain to buy.

That aside, a solid twenty year or so run on the Campy high end NR/SR speaks. Where as Shimano seemingly changed every two years, even as the AX was rad new- it poofed in very short time. Could only imagine the directors scratching their heads and re-tooling budgets.

Shimano was gaining in the general family bicycle market and in general recognition, didn't make the pro grade until the legendary SIS and only after Hampsten's big stage at the Giro.

All one has to do is research the teams back when and look closely at pics. Where was Shimano Crane and Dura Ace?

Personally, I appreciate the old Campy NR-SR dominance, respect it but becomes boring in the classic scene. I don't mind seeing reworked long caged, drillium / lightened, a company like what ICS was doing. I also like seeing other makes and brands, the underdogs, ideas - good or bad and seeing them in use today. Dig the early Dura Ace for its history and challenging the long dominant Campagnolo.

dddd

With respect to the rear derailer shifting performance, it makes a huge difference in terms of shifting response whether a modern or traditional (bushed) chain is on the bike, as the latter is far stiffer laterally and so is much less affected by varying chain gap.

For the most part, the NR rear derailer is handicapped compared to the Simplex, Suntour and Shimano mech's when modern chain is used, though the particulars of chain length, axle position and freewheel brand and size can add up to totally make or break a sporting rider's ability to get fast, clean shifts time after time.

No surprise then that I at times am impressed or disappointed by the shifting performance of a Nuovo Record rear derailer.

I'll add that using a new Sedisport chain on a Shimano UG or Suntour Alpha freewheel can help allow a Nuovo Record rear derailer to handle even a comfortably-geared 28t freewheel gracefully if the chain length, chainring difference, axle position and cable housing are given some consideration. Performance on some installations seems surprisingly good!

One more thing is that the shift lever tension screw tightness is a big deal on any friction-shifted bike, so anything that is causing the rider to heavily tighten the friction screw is hugely detrimental to shifting performance. I have come across many bikes where the anti-rotation washers allowed the friction screw to self-loosen ever so slightly with every back-and-forth movement of the lever, resulting in an ever-changing friction level that the rider had to suffer along with. Credit the tolerances on many of the lever bosses that allow a tiny amount of rotational freeplay, it can ruin an otherwise good bike's shifting. Sometimes it is an installation problem, parts missing or not fitted right, but always worth fixing.

A lack of lever pivot or cable guide lubrication is something that may serve as a performance revelation when finally remedied, while too much length in the rear-most cable housing can also be very bad for shifting performance. These are very common problems.

Lastly, even the shortest rear cable housing run can benefit from use of lined, compressionless housing (using appropriate ferrules, which is not always easy/simple), can make a big difference!

Last ride 76 

I would agree this is an excellent point regarding DA vs NR BITD!
But expecting racing equipment to last into the C&V era is not something any of us were thinking about at the time... If you were, why not stockpile a few thousand cable clips?


True.