another Campagnolo rant of mine

bondurant

From a road cc article: 'One new feature is that the Potenza design incorporates an internal crank extractor to make maintenance easier.'

lesfirth

Captain Fagor wrote:

My 10 speed Centaur (circa 2005) LHS ergo lever on my winter bike is starting to behave a bit oddly. Yet to investigate fully but perhaps the cables and outers need replacing and the rear derailleur a deep clean to reduce friction in the system. Only 10.5k miles, so hopefully not worn out. Have noted the rebuild services available - thanks.

What do folk do when your Campag chainrings wear out? I appreciate that the chainrings should outlast several casettes, but it's a winter bike and on a couple of occasions I've let the chain stretch way beyond the limit before noticing, by which the time chainrings are semi-cooked. Last time (after about 7500 miles), I initially sourced non OEM rings (Stronglight or TA, I can't recall), but the shifting was dreadful. Massive overshifts required when going up the rings, then corrective downward clicks thereafter. So I bit the bullet and got a whole new chainset. Nowadays, 10sp triple campag square taper chainsets are quite rare.

Because of all this, I do have one eye on a replacement groupset. Most of my good bikes have either 10sp Record or 11 speed Chorus (i.e. square taper or Ultratorque). As it's a winter bike, I would be looking at a mid-range triple, which leaves only one choice: Potenza. Is Powertorque really that bad? I do all my own spannering work, but would really baulk at the propsect of paying silly money for bespoke bearing pullers. I've cobbled lots of presses togther from laser cut washers and nuts and bolts, but pullers are another matter entirely. Hmmm...

I am an ex car mechanic and I still have access to a well equipped car repair workshop that has all sorts of gear/bearing pullers.
It took the combined effort of me and just about everyone who works there to remove my Powertorque crank. Removing the non drive side crank without damage was the problem. Everyone agreed that the force required was crazy. Bearing removal is straightforward, you still need a bearing puller. The chainset went on Ebay not back o the bike.

ugo.santalucia

lesfirth wrote:

I am an ex car mechanic and I still have access to a well equipped car repair workshop that has all sorts of gear/bearing pullers.
It took the combined effort of me and just about everyone who works there to remove my Powertorque crank. Removing the non drive side crank without damage was the problem. Everyone agreed that the force required was crazy. Bearing removal is straightforward, you still need a bearing puller. The chainset went on Ebay not back o the bike.

Let's not forget that when Campagnolo came out with Powertorque in 2010, there was no tool available on the market to remove it. It took Campagnolo months before they finally released the tool... it was shambles and put off a few LBS I know in Italy from ordering any more Campagnolo stuff.
A big blow... but well deserved

Rodrego Hernandez

Captain Fagor wrote:

This 10sp love-in makes me thing of some of the spares I've hoarded over the years, including the Record 10sp alloy chainset (BNIB) that I bought to have spare OEM chainrings. Recall Boonen favouring those over the carbon replacements.

Also decommissioned my Bianchi Mega Pro XL Carbon a year ago, and the 10sp Centaur g/set (7k miles).

Boonen rode 177.5 chainsets - the older record carbon chainset was not available in that length.

rolf_f

itboffin wrote:

They're centaur carbon UT new shape but seem to have had a really limited run, shift like modern record+ but robust like old skool campag

Trump could even call them "fake" campagnolo

It wasn't long - when I bought my Look in I guess 2009, Chris at Epic was going on about the new shape being slightly shorter than the old which was a good thing for my fit. Then, 6 months later I was buying a Ribble Gran Fondo, very clearly specifying that I wanted the Groupset to be Ultrashift/Ultratorque. And when I picked it up, it had the Powershift levers as the Ultrashift were already obsolete. I made them swap them for the shifters on a display bike - the last pair they had!
I've got three pairs in total but would be tempted to get a pair of the late Record 10 speed shifters that seem weirdly available.
I'm not so convinced about the mechs. The Ribble had the old shape Centaur Carbon rear mech - the bushings in the parallelogram ended up developing play so that was that. So far, I think the replacement new shape Veloce has lasted rather longer - and you would expect that mechanically the new shape would be better.