UKC

Seen this posted elsewhere today. Had a variety of interesting answers. Thought I'd re-post here as I'm interested to see what people have to say about it.

So explain Campagnolo to me, why do some people love/loathe it?

In reply to Frank4short:

It a history thing. When I was a kid a super record equiped bike was an unaffordable thing of beauty. The quality of the finish was far superior to the Jap alternatives (even if sometimes the functionality was often inferior. Campag was what was on the pros bikes and everybody wanted it even if Suntour was lighter. MAMILs (middle age men in Lycra) still want it.

In reply to Frank4short: It's Italian and therefore has more soul than the japanese groupsets. Or it is Italian so it breaks down more often than Japanese Groupsets. Or it is another groupset which works well and you just happen to prefer the aesthetics of it. Etc.

In reply to Frank4short:

The trite answer from several years ago is Campag 'wears in' and Shimano 'wears out'

I'm seriously 'old school' and back in the day Campag simply was the best, in terms of design, operation, durability -- quality in general. They revolutionised equipment design by introducing the first quick release hubs and deformable parallelogram derailleurs. They were the standard by which every other equipment manufacturer was judged - and few came anywhere close. Most european competitors went bust or just died.

The group I was riding with yesterday were all the wrong side of 60 yet all had Campag groupsets on their very modern carbon steeds!

Shimano entered the field somewhere in the 70's on the coattails of the dominant Japanese engineering industry but despite some interesting innovations took quite a while before becoming established in the mainstream of 'top end' componentry.

In reply to JLS:

It still is!

Back in the day all I could afford was 'Gran Sport' - though I did eventually upgrade to Record front & rear mechs.

Nowadays I use a Veloce groupset.

In reply to Lord of Starkness:

Nuff said! ^^^^^^^^ I'm still using Campag stuff that is nearly 50 yrs old and came off my old mans bike!!

In reply to Frank4short:
Camapagonol gets a mention in Half Man Half Biscuit's "A Lilac Harry Quinn" (from McIntyre,Treadmore and Davitt in 1991).

However in Excavating Rita on the last album comes the line "I'm on Shimano Ultegra now"

In reply to Frank4short:

Did you watch the Tour today? 3 teams out of the 22 were using Campag - nuff said

A better question would be explain Campag users to me. I love it when they start frothing at the mouth - winding Campag users up is like shooting fish in a barrel.

As for me. I have SRAM Red on my race bike, Dura Ace on my training bike (this was trickled down when I upgraded to SRAM) and Veloce on my winter hack.
I love all three for a variety of reasons.

E

In reply to Enty:

Never tought I'd change from Campag but those crap BB's did it for me in the end, I've now got Dura Ace on my good bike, Ultegra on my training bike and Shimano Red on my TT bike. No regrets at all.

In reply to Frank4short:

Same view from me regarding looking into the window of Paul Milnes Cycles, in the early 80's, at some Nuovo Record equipped 753 beauty.

I mostly run Campag, but have an Ultegra equipped Planet X as well. I don't find much differance between the two.

Campag seems to suffer less from being associated with cheaper bikes, unlike Shimano who offer a wider range of price point groupsets well below the quality of Xenon.

In reply to Enty: My favorite Campag parts are from the late eighties and early nineties, when things went all flowy and rounded and were still shiny silver, and thier silver hubs adjustable just with an allen key.

Quite happy to use Shimano or suntour or generic parts on my bikes as well, but I do like the shiny silver Campag bits which are all sculptured and nice looking, when i've finished restoring my great uncle's F.W Evans road bike it's going to have shiny silver Campag on it, but for my other bikes I don't care what's on them.

In reply to Enty:Think there should be a law that road bike parts should be shiny silver. ()

In reply to Frank4short:

I could only ever afford Benelux derailleurs, with the telescopic arm protected by a clock spring.

In reply to Frank4short:Campagnolo's range of spare parts is ment to be pretty good, I think you can change the cage on your rear mech if/when the pivots go floppy, and keep the rest of the bits. You might need to get an approved Service Centre to do it though.

In reply to Frank4short:

http://www.campagnolo.com/jsp/en/doc/doccatid_3.jsp

Here's the spare parts section. I think you can get new springs and things for Sram shifters as well though.

In reply to Frank4short:

For me it's all about image and aesthetics. When I was a mountain biker and only looked at road bikes when the TdF was on, I wanted a road bike equipped with Campagnolo Veloce just because of how it sounded. When I bought a road bike I bought one with Campag Veloce just to scratch an itch. I've never looked back (I once thought about switching to SRAM but came to my senses).

Now I think Campag just looks so much nicer than anything else available. SRAM stuff looks ok but it looks like it's been designed by a mountain biker and for a few years now Shimano has been plain fugly.

It has a nice solid feel to it, too. I like the positive lever action and the "clunk" when it shifts.

Rob

And what's with those nasty little thumb shifters on Campy? Campag may have won a stage or two, but Shimano get the GC

In reply to Enty:

An amusing exchange between two cyclist friends of mine upon meeting each other for the first time in a pub recently: I should say that Friend 1 is a Campag jihadist.

Friend 1: Oh you're a cyclist too?
Friend 2: Yes, mostly road cycling.
Friend 1: Campag or Shimano?
Friend 2: Both my bikes have Shimano.
Friend 1: Right, outside now!

To the OP:

All that's been said above pretty much sums it up. Shimano, Campag, and afaik Sram all work well, especially the top end stuff. Personally I like Campag, mainly for the mechanical feel and the ergonomics of the levers, and that the left hand lever isn't indexed. On my touring bike I have 10 speed Campag levers mated to a 9 speed Shimano XT deraillers and block, which works perfectly.

In reply to Timmd: See I don't actually buy into the spare parts thing. If you look at the Shimano technical documents website you can get a spare part number for nigh on any shimano part ever made though you still can't actually get 98% of them. On the STW thread that spawned this one a couple of folk have cited Campag spare parts. To which several other posters have said yeah well that's all well and good until you actually need to get any. Which sums it up perfectly for me.

As to the question. Well I can't help but feel it's an old timer thing relating to peoples memories of what campag was years ago whereas now I don't believe it has any superiority to any other brand. Further to that personally the engineer in me prefers Shimano as it seems less stylised and more functional. Though that is of course a personal preference.

In reply to Bean Head:

Sounds like SRAM to me.

Never understood the Campag thing, had a bike with Veloce once a genuinely awful experience that made my Ducati look reliable.

In reply to Frank4short: when I was testing various road bikes the other month,I found the campag thumb shifters poorly designed and positioned,only really accessible with your thumbsover the hoods. The Japanese stuff seemed more ergonomic andbetter thought out.

NB these are the musings of a road newbie

In reply to David Hooper: I think as a newbie you're better placed to comment than many oldies and their dogmas!

In reply to flipper:

Oy! Don't bring Pinarellos into the debate.

In reply to Frank4short: I needed a centre pull rear caliper for my TT bike build. Campag do one supposedly. It arrives in a Campag box.

Made in Taiwan.. it is a Tektro caliper. Hmmmm.

In reply to Horse:


Oddly just chatting with my bro-in-law and telling him I had sold my old road bike. It was over 10 years old and had Campag Mirage on it. Had always been excellent, despite a fair amount of miles done over the decade. His old road bike has the same groupset, he now commutes and turbo trains on it and has found the same thing. So two +ve experiences of their cheaper end.

My new bike has 105 on it which has been very good though too. I'm having a bit of fiddle trying to get the back mech indexed on the lowest gear properly, but do like the trimming on the front mech.

In reply to David Hooper:

Not at lower end though. Tried a bike with Sora I think, and you can't use the thumb shifters from the drops. Whilst with the Campag Mirage that my old bike had, you easily could. Seems a bit of a cock-up from Shimano.

In reply to TobyA:

Unsurprisingly we tend to give weight to our own experience. I had one experience that was crap compared to Shimano and SRAM, for me that counts for more than your two.

That experience does nothing to convince me there is anything particularly "special" about Campagnolo that is worth getting excited about.

My own preference is for SRAM.

In reply to TobyA: Which is why I believe they've filtered the higher end system down to Sora. Only on aftermarket shifters this season, but on new bikes from next year, Sora will be rid of the little thumb button. I'm not sure whether 2300 will retain it.

In reply to Frank4short:
Roadies arguing about components - how pathetic...

It's a bit like the way some MTBers still insist that wheels must be 26in, when it obvious that 29in is vastly superior and anyone who thinks otherwise is a complete idiot.....

In reply to Liam M: Good to hear. It was one of those really odd things where you think how come they could have started making these by the thousands when clearly no one with a passing interest in road biking had actually tried them!

In reply to Enty:


You've had me wondering since I read this, how do you wind them up?

Is it not bad business to wind up your guests? ()

In reply to Horse:

In Cycling Plus they described Veloce 9 speed shifters as proven and reliable a year or two ago. Perhaps something was amiss on your bike (i'm not saying you're not mechanically minded enough to index gears)?


But but but, parts can come in shiny silver and they're Italian, which makes them cool. Don't you know anything? ()

In reply to Frank4short:

How could you fit this to your bike...

http://road.cc/content/news/40313-updated-first-ride-shimano-ultegra-di2

...when this is available?

http://road.cc/content/news/61951-campag-unveil-athena-eps

Wouldn't give up my Chorus groupo for either of them, though. I'll admit that, apart from continuing with their "make it ugly as sin" theme, Shimano have the upper hand on the electronic front. But Campag goes up to 11.

Rob

In reply to Timmd:
When a hardened campag afficionado comes out with the old classic "Shimano also make fishing reels" just mention that Lamborghini also make farm tractors.


It's in the T&C's - "anyone who gets off to push a Campag Super Record equipped Pinarello Dogma will have the bikke permanently taken off them"

All done in good nature. Thankfully we've been blessed with guests with great senses of humour over the years - you need to have one to stay with us )
If anyone gets above their station I take them out with my club where not only do they get their legs ripped off they also get 4 hours of relentless Rosbif piss taken out of them (like I do twice a week)

E

In reply to Timmd:

The Veloce on my winter hack is now 11 years old and still runs sweet. All my 105 and Ultegra levers from the same era gave up years ago.

E

In reply to Timmd:

Well yes, my point was I don't see it as any more or less worth drooling over than the SRAM on my Colnago or the Shimano on my Bianchi.

In reply to Enty:

Have you just answered the OP's question?

In reply to Horse:

I was being flippant, it's personal I guess.

In reply to Frank4short: I've got a 14 year old bike with a mix of Campag Chorus and Athena on it, and to this day it still runs perfectly. My mates and I had long argued about the Campag/Shimano debate, and in our group, we were fairly evenly split. I was, and still am, a Campag ,man.

About nine years ago I decided to build a no-expense race bike (well, as much as I could afford anyway), so I bought a Bianchi Boron frame, HED wheels, Selle Italia bits and bobs and a full Record groupset. Beautiful stuff, especially with all the carbon and titanium. The main thing though was the functionality, something which still gives me no bother at all.

Some of my friends who use Shimano have had problems, especially with the shifters, having had to replace them, whereas the only thing I've had to replace are chains and brake blocks.

Overall, each to his own, but I think Campag functions flawlessly, and looks good too. "Jewellery for your bike", as one friend put it. I have tried Shimano. and didn't take to it. For mountain bikes though, XTR all the way...

In reply to Timmd:

Not really because my 2 year old SRAM Red on my race bike is the crispest, most solid equipment I've ever used.

Horses for Courses.

E

In reply to Frank4short:
If Campag can't be bothered to make 165mm cranks they don't deserve to be in business. Ultegra all the way for me

In reply to Enty:

Interesting, yes horses for courses.

In reply to kevin stephens:

But they can. Maybe that's what keeps them in business, but I doubt it.

http://www.campagnolo.com/jsp/en/groupsetdetail/item_guar165mm_catid_13.jsp

Rob