DaveSSS 

Old thread resurrection? Watch the dates in the future, unless you have a relevant question.

Leinster

I dunno, I think from the remove of a couple of years, it's worth having the discussion of whether Campag made a mistake by introducing Potenza, which has now been discontinued (they did).

Or if Campag made a mistake by discontinuing Athena (they did).

Or whether Campag should bring back another silver group at a higher level than Centaur (they should).

chaadster

That discussion could, and should, be its own thread, but your points get to the issues I raised upthread in post #3 from 4 years ago. I wanted Athena but couldn't get it, disliked the features of then-available Potenza, and wound up spending more than I wanted to on Chorus. I don't know what that says, if anything, about what Campy should or shouldn't do or have done, but from my perspective as a consumer, yeah, having more diverse options would be nice. For example, I have a retro-styled, thumb shifted, flatbar roadie which would look straight dapper hanging a silver derailleur switching 10 or 11 gears, but I don't think its realistic to expect Campy to support that kind of market, and being honest, were it a "market," I probably wouldn't then want it for myself. I think they should be offering bronze Cerakote finishes with UD carbon fiber on their new stuff; set the trend, Campagnolo!

Leinster

I had to google bronze cerakote. I think that color scheme belongs on a long-cage derailleur hanging from an All-City Gorilla Monsoon. I would ride the heck out of that bike.

I think as Campag fans, we must always acknowledge that, as big as they are, they are still comparatively niche in terms of worldwide sales in the road groupset market, so we shouldn't expect them to meet our every desire of form and function; We probably never will get that silver ergo gravel group with delta brakes and clearance for 35c tires.

Litespud

I'm running early 2000's Chorus 10, all silver componentry - every so often I get a hankering to upgrade to 12s, but I just can't get behind a black groupset, so I mollify myself by stocking up on yet another 10s cassette and some chainrings. I had the shifters rebuilt last year, so they should be good for at least a decade. By then, maybe I'll have gotten over my prejudice toward black groupsets, or Campagnolo will have done the unthinkable, and released a "Heritage" silver wireless EPS 12s groupset (OhPleaseOhPleaseOhPlease )

erikmar

Hi everyone, many years ago, I built up my Ti road bike using 2013 Athena components. Recently, the rear shifter has started misbehaving, shifting down several gears at once. I think it's a broken spring carrier, as in this repair video:

. To repair it seems really difficult and tedious, and not guaranteed to fix what seems to be a design flaw. I think these are my options, in order of desirability:
1. Find an original 2013 right Athena (silver) brifter, or a pair, and replace my bad one. This option is pretty unlikely. There don't seem to be any left.
2. Find a compatible modern (likely post-2015) brifter pair and replace both. Hopefully, Campy fixed the spring carrier design problem post 2015, but I'm not sure. Would the current Centaur brifters work? I understand that the Potenzas won't.
3. Replace the drivetrain components with Potenza. I've already had to replace the Athena rear derailleur once already as it exploded on a long ride a few years ago. This is a costly option, but hopefully Potenza is more robust than Athena seems to have been.
What do you all think?

chaadster

You could replace just the broken Athena shifter
with a Chorus, Record, or Super Record shifter. As I recall, though, there was a cable pull ratio change in ‘15, so you’ll want to stick with an 11spd shifter from the ‘09-‘14 range.

I crashed and broke on of my ‘12 Athena Carbon brifters and replaced it with a Chorus unit, which worked particularly well because the black colors matched (though the weave is different). If you have silver Athena, maybe the lever could be swapped into a CH/RE/SC body...

erikmar

Chaadster,
Thanks for the quick reply. That makes sense. Would you happen to know is the spring housing assembly of the pre-2015 non-athena shifters (SR, RE, or CH) are improved over the Athena assembly? If any one of them is more durable, I'd go for that one over an Athena replacement. Thanks again.

chaadster

I don’t know, sorry. It has not been my understanding that folks found Athena fragile, though I understand your experience has you concerned. I’ve two Athena equipped bikes, and they’ve both been excellent performers, and though I definitely do not put a lot of miles on them, they have been through all kinds of conditions, from crit races, all day rain rides, gravel races, and freezing weather. My only real issue was that I lost the hidden chainring bolt on the alloy Athena crank on the Kinesis, a crushingly expensive, proprietary bolt and washer which is not easy to get.

Point being, maybe your shifter failure is quite rare, and not necessarily something to fret too much about about improving on with a replacement, like a “how often does lightning strike the same place twice?” type of thing. Again, if you’re loading up on massive mileage, I totally get it and am not trying to dissuade you from finding more durable replacements, rather just raising the point for your consideration. I remember I got the first, underbar STI button shifters from Shimano in ‘89/‘90, the DX units, and had at least two— probably three— of those units fail on me before concluding they just weren’t good enough and moving to Suntour thumbies, a pair of which I still have and functioning fine on my Derkerf from the mid-90s. Sorting out what is luck, use case (i.e. wear), good design, or bad materials is tricky, so we do our best, pay our money and take our chances.

I hope you can find whichever bits you want quickly and get it back running right! It’s a great looking groupset, IMO!



Athena Carbon gruppo on Breezer Venturi

Athena equipped Kinesis Racelight 4S w/ Crud RoadRacer Mk3 fenders

Kars 

I was hoping one of the experts here could answer this question: I purchased a brand new Centaur 11 speed compact crank to replace my record 11 speed crankset. The record crankset is a 39/53 from year around 2013. All the components on the bike are record from around 2013 when I purchased the bike used. Both the record and Centaur are ultra torque. Can I swap in the Centaur crank without problems. I am trying to get lower gearing without having to spend a lot on a new record crankset. I know I could change the rear cassette but that has limits too. Thanks in advance

gfk_velo

Kars

Apart from a reset on the FD for height and cable tension / limit screws, it should work OK.

The Centaur 11 crankset has a different ring spacing compared to the Record unit (Centaur rings in this version are further apart and slightly further "out" from the frame to work better with disc brake systems) so you will need to do the set-up from scratch but broadly it will work "OK" although not 100% perfectly.

At Campagnolo, we / they have 3 descriptions of compatibility, a sort of internal shorthand -

• "Incompatible" where a combination either just won't work, or interoperability is a unpredictbable,
• "OK" where the combination will work but potentially there is some compromise in function and set up may need to be more considered
• "Compatible" where function will be perfect and to spec if set-up is correct.

Hope that helps ...

gfk_velo

Best thing to do is replace the RH shifter body only - EC-AT100 (black composite shift lever), EC-AT200 (silver alloy shift lever), EC-AT200B (black alloy shift lever).
The body is everything except the brake lever, hood, clip and fixing bolt.

DO NOT spray anything into the lever body - almost every failure I have ever seen in the PowerShift lever bodies is atrributable to mineral oil being sprayed into the lever body at some stage - this softens the plastic of the tip of the thumb lever and of the cable ratchet bushing, promoting accelerated wear, which upsets the internal timing of the lever mechanism.

Campagnolo changed the pastics used in Feb 2014 to Delrin from Nylonin order to counter this problem and we have barely seen a problem with this since.

Spraying lube into lever bodies is a habit many mechanics have but Campagnolo have never recommended it as a service instruction - the levers are factory-lubed for their service life and only need re-lubricating if the lube is washed out by the use of degreasers or strong detergents. In cases where it needs to be done, Kluber NB52 Isoflex Topas can be bought as an aerosol and that can be used, or the lever can be sent to us (based in the UK) for a proper clean and rebuild with fresh grrease.

HTH

erikmar

Thanks for the input. Makes sense. I'll most likely go with the EC-AT200, which is on backorder everywhere I've looked - but I can wait.

gfk_velo

Are you in the UK?
If so, if we don't have stock, I can probably build you one ...

erikmar

I'm in the US, unfortunately. I'll have to wait until some stock winds its way through the supply channels to make it here. Thanks for the offer, though.

gfk_velo

I'll give my opposite number your side of the pond a heads-up and see if I can get any delivery info.
Can't promise but I can ask the question :-D

Kars 

thanks gfk velo. I am glad I don't have to return the crankset. I Look forward to getting those lower gears working for the hills here.

kingston 

I'm running an Easton 46/30 crank with SR11, is that also considered OK?

gfk_velo

You'd have to try it on your specific frame and with whatever cassette you are running.
You are fighting three things that are likely to give you problems:

Chainrings themselves are quite widely spaced and the ramping and pinning to help the chain up the big percentage difference in tooth count between the rings will be generic and may and not work well with the Campag chain.

46/30 is 16 teeth, true - however the difference in terms of chainring diameters is different to say, 50/34 (the minimum sizes made for the SR crank / max tooth difference the FD is designed for) so you may run into problems with where on the cage the chain passes, so the ramps built into the FD may and may not engage the chain to assist it "up" or "down. You may find it necessary to use a dog tooth or chain catcher for reliable downshifts. You shouldn't need to in cases where you are running all properly compatible parts.

The chainring spacing will be wrong, most 3rd party cranksets go for some hybrid of the spacings from the "big 3", leaning more towards Shimano 11s (and in some cases, simply replicating it, though often for one model year's version only) Shimano, Campagnolo, SRAM all publish technical data on things like chainring spacing but the publication is of course at the time of launch, so if any groupset maker makes changes in areas like that, third party makers are always behind the curve because they have to review that information, then start their R and D and testing process ...

You might get it to work "OK" but it'll never shift to spec.

I'd probably avoid it if you can ... but appreciate that if you want to use a sub-compact, you don't really have too many choices.

kingston 

Thanks for the detailed response. I've been running that setup for a little over a year (6-7k km on that bike including a full SR series and a hilly 1,200k), and it works ok. Since I ride long-distance, my speed is usually in the 20-30 kph range. With a compact at those speeds, it seems like I'm always cross-chained and making a lot of front shifts, especially when I run a narrow cassette. With the sub-compact, I'm in the big ring ~95% of the time and just use the little ring as a granny-gear so even though the front shifting might not be as good, there's a lot less of it. I also put a 46T big ring on my rain bike with Athena 11 with similar results.

Kars 

I have a problem. I installed the new crank following park tools procedure exactly. I torqued down the drive side bolt to 42 nm but there is play in the crank when it turns. Maybe the heath is not fully meshed together inside? Any thoughts on what is going on ?

gfk_velo

Got it - yes, that makes sense and can see why it would work in your circumstances.
For my reference (I try to accumulate "it works" data for those that ask ...) do you know the chainstay length, BB drop and seat angle for your frame? Can I also check what cassette sizes you run? Appreciate any info you can give.
I have a feeling sub-compact will become more of "a thing" over the next years ...

gfk_velo

The usual reason for side-to-side play is that the BB shell is under-width but since (IIRC) you are replacing into a set of UT cups that have already carried a crank set without problems, that is probably not it in your case.

Assuming the spring clip is in place on the drive side and the wavy washer is in place on the non-drive side, the modified Hurth joint in Centaur, with the new "position" spline will only mesh correctly with the cranks at 180 deg to each other - AFAIK, the bolt won't actually bite if the "halves" of the axle are mis-aligned but I haven't actually tried it to be 100% sure, so it's just possible it's that.

The spring clip may be mis-placed on the drive side (DS), or not fully engaged - the clip limits side-to-side motion of the cranks against the wavy washer.

Disengage the spring clip from the DS cup, and push the crank very firmly towards the non drive side (the wavy washer will be "pulling" it that way anyway) and re-engage the clip, making sure that both pins are all the way in - the spring clip should sit snug in the groove on the DS cup when they are - I occasionally see them with just one pin engaged. In that case the tell-tale is that the clip isn't sitting properly flush in it's groove.

Check the installation instructions at www.campagnolo.com, under Support and Video Tutorials - the PT videos are generally pretty good but I'd generally advise going to the source, regardless of manufacturer, where they provide information. Often they'll update it and the third party providers like PT will occasionally lag behind ...

kingston 

2004 Seven Vacanza with 2011 SR11
Seat tube length (CTC): 46 cm
Effective top tube: 56.7 cm
Head tube angle: 73 deg
Seat tube angle: 73.5 deg
Chain stay length: 42.6 cm
BB height/drop: 7.8cm
Top tube slope 12 deg
I run a 12-25 most of the time and a 12-29 if I feel like the ride warrants it for whatever reason; multi-day ride, lots of big hills, slower group, etc. The carbon FD cage broke so I replaced it with one from a chorus FD if that makes any difference, but that was before I switched to the sub-compact chainset.

1989 Team Miyata with 2016 Athena 11
Geometry here
I just swapped the 50T chainring with a 46T chainring that I assume was intended for the 46/36 CX chainset. I run the same size cassettes with that bike and it also works ok. I made this change first and liked it so much better I decided to get a sub-compact on the seven.


Perhaps. Apparently most people don't care about wide spacing, so the industry has decided to solve the low gears problem with longer RD cages and wider cassettes. Just look at the Campagnolo 12-speed cassettes. They're all too high and wide for a low-power high-cadence guy like me. Curious to me that Campy only has three, and there are no after market cassettes. I'd need a 42/26 chainset to make the 11-29 work and would never have any use for the other two. I'm not fast enough to be in Camy's target demo, but I know there are other old slow rich guys like me out there who like to spend money on bike parts they don't really need. I'm hoping my 11 speed stuff holds up and/or replacement parts are available until someone comes up with a narrower campy 12-speed cassette. When gearing comes up in conversation, most recreational cyclists I talk to, especially ones who took it up as adults, have no idea what gears they are running. It's just whatever Shimano decided to spec on their bike.

Kars 

This crank seems like it does not fit. The crank arm on the non drive side is wobbly and seems like it does not fully seat internally. I compared measurements of my record crank to this one and it is different by about 1 mm. One side seems slightly shorter and the other maybe longer. I am wondering if I should send it back unless I am doing something wrong. I had the clip and wavy washer installed per campy video. Thoughts?