Campagnolo Centaur Question

cgh21

There’s a Dolan Prefissio fitted with Campy Centaur on offer locally for £300. By the looks of it on the pictures it’s one of the older iterations with the red screws etc - so no carbon cranks etc. What year would that be? 2012? Did the Centaur from that date have good reviews and would I still be able to get parts/replacements if something goes wrong with it?

super_davo

Centaur has been through many iterations so you really need to know the year. I have 2010 with Ultra shift and an ultra torque chainset and it is superb; functionally identical to Record. Later years dumbed it down a bit with power shift and power torque, but still a good groupset.
Power torque chainsets are the biggest pain in the backside because they are hard to service.
But for £300 on a Prefessio.. if in decent nick probably a good buy

cgh21

super_davo wrote:

Centaur has been through many iterations so you really need to know the year. I have 2010 with Ultra shift and an ultra torque chainset and it is superb; functionally identical to Record. Later years dumbed it down a bit with power shift and power torque, but still a good groupset.
Power torque chainsets are the biggest pain in the backside because they are hard to service.
But for £300 on a Prefessio.. if in decent nick probably a good buy

Looking at a picture of the bike it seems the chainset's power torque. Is that going to be a world of pain to repair if the inevitable happens and something goes wrong?

lesfirth

cgh21 wrote:

super_davo wrote:

Centaur has been through many iterations so you really need to know the year. I have 2010 with Ultra shift and an ultra torque chainset and it is superb; functionally identical to Record. Later years dumbed it down a bit with power shift and power torque, but still a good groupset.
Power torque chainsets are the biggest pain in the backside because they are hard to service.
But for £300 on a Prefessio.. if in decent nick probably a good buy

Looking at a picture of the bike it seems the chainset's power torque. Is that going to be a world of pain to repair if the inevitable happens and something goes wrong?

Yes. If like me you have an aversion to paying someone to do anything to any bike you have ever owned, the best place to put a powertorque chainset is Ebay.

cycleclinic

Or buy the tools. Power torque bb's are quite reliable ( more so than ultra torque sometimes) so are worth it. All the spares are available .

To give you a hint the only BB types I use on my winter bikes ( there a three) are square taper and power torque.

Red and black centaur was about in 2012

cgh21

Great information everyone. Many thanks.

Tiesetrotter

Also Centaur 10 speed spares are still available. But it will not be that cheap. The last itterations had the choice of carbon or non-carbon bits.

The lever mech's will gradually wear out and get a bit spongy. But I think I did 36k km before that happened. If you are OK with buttons, it still far iin a way out performs my latest Ultegra groupset on crisp fast gear changes.

raisinberry777

Tiesetrotter wrote:

Also Centaur 10 speed spares are still available. But it will not be that cheap. The last itterations had the choice of carbon or non-carbon bits.

The lever mech's will gradually wear out and get a bit spongy. But I think I did 36k km before that happened. If you are OK with buttons, it still far iin a way out performs my latest Ultegra groupset on crisp fast gear changes.

Worst case scenario, there's 2015 Veloce 10 speed levers available, which have the nicer EPS style thumb shifter.

bigmat

raisinberry777 wrote:

Tiesetrotter wrote:

Also Centaur 10 speed spares are still available. But it will not be that cheap. The last itterations had the choice of carbon or non-carbon bits.

The lever mech's will gradually wear out and get a bit spongy. But I think I did 36k km before that happened. If you are OK with buttons, it still far iin a way out performs my latest Ultegra groupset on crisp fast gear changes.

Worst case scenario, there's 2015 Veloce 10 speed levers available, which have the nicer EPS style thumb shifter.

Does anyone know whether you can switch the brake lever on these shifters? I have carbon Centaur shifters but mechanism is feeling a bit worn, was wondering whether I could get the Veloce ones (current shape) swap the alloy brake levers for my carbon ones?

cycleclinic

Yes. Veloce and centaur parts can be interchanged as far as I can tell. All the shifter bodies are in production but the levers are not spares that are readily available.

The exception is ultra shift shifters. They really need the matching rd as rd made for ultra shift have a stronger spring. So fitting a current veloce rd to an work with an ultra shift centaur shifter will of course index fine but over time shifting will deteriorate more quickly as the weaker spring in the power shift era rd's won't compensate for the overshift that ultra shift does unless more frequent cable changes are made.

bigmat

thecycleclinic wrote:

Yes. Veloce and centaur parts can be interchanged as far as I can tell. All the shifter bodies are in production but the levers are not spares that are readily available.

The exception is ultra shift shifters. They really need the matching rd as rd made for ultra shift have a stronger spring. So fitting a current veloce rd to an work with an ultra shift centaur shifter will of course index fine but over time shifting will deteriorate more quickly as the weaker spring in the power shift era rd's won't compensate for the overshift that ultra shift does unless more frequent cable changes are made.

I'd be the reverse - 10 speed ultra-shift RD (Record) with power-shift shifters. Should work nice and crisply, albeit without the ability to shift up several gears at a time? If I can do that but keep the carbon brake levers I reckon it might work quite well.