Campagnolo's own 36T rings?

neeb
neeb Posts: 4,467
edited March 2014 in Road buying advice
Does anyone know if it is actually possible now to buy Campagnolo 11sp 36T chainrings?

Campy* have been producing 52/36 chainsets for some time now. Some people must already be looking for replacements for worn rings. I would like to try an all-Campagnolo 50/36 11sp combination.** Yes, I know campy say that you aren't supposed to pair the 36T rings with the 50T ones, but we all know that is just marketing bollox.

So, where on earth does one buy these things, or are chainsets now supposed to be disposable items that you throw out when the rings are worn??

* I'll call them campy if I want to. The main reason I want to is to bug people who subscribe to the irrational myth that "campag" is somehow a superior abbreviation. Campagnolo have called themselves "campy", they have never called themselves "campag"!

** Yes, I know you can run 3rd party rings such as TA or Stronglite, I am already doing this.

Comments

  • xixang
    xixang Posts: 235
    why would they say you can't pair 50 with 36? I've a record chainset that came like that brand new. Granted it's 10 speed but why would 11 speed be any different?

    Unfortunately I can't answer your question and have the same question but in need of 10 speed. I'm resigned to getting TA or Stronglight
  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,467
    xixang wrote:
    why would they say you can't pair 50 with 36? I've a record chainset that came like that brand new. Granted it's 10 speed but why would 11 speed be any different?

    Unfortunately I can't answer your question and have the same question but in need of 10 speed. I'm resigned to getting TA or Stronglight
    Campagnolo claim that the ramps and pins etc are optimised for pairs of chainrings, so you are not supposed to mix a 36 with a 50... :D I don't believe a word of it, or at least I don't believe it's going to make a significant difference.

    I've since found that you can buy the 36T 11sp rings, but they are hard to find and for some reason almost all of the stockists are in the U.S. (despite Campagnolo being a European company..). Part number is FC-SR036. They are only compatible with 2011 => ultratorque of course, as they have the threaded bolt holes.
  • xixang
    xixang Posts: 235
    given that it seems odd they used to have the option of 50/36. maybe they had so called "issues", hence why I couldn't get same for my new bike when I bought a new chorus groupset 2yrs back. It's BS IMO as I've been running original campag 50/36 rings since 2004/2005 without any problems
  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,467
    Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I've maintained for a while that the reason it is so difficult to get 50/36 cranksets is because the manufacturers (well, Campagnolo at least) want to maintain two different product lines, i.e. standard and compact BCD. The only real advantage of a bigger BCD crankset these days is that the rings that come as standard (53/39 or 52/39) have smaller gaps between them, so there isn't such a jump between the big ring and the small ring. Both the 50/34 and 52/36 "compact" options have larger gaps between the two rings. The 50/36 combination feels the same as a 53/39 if paired with an appropriate cassette, so if they sold that as an off-the-shelf option the 110 compact BCD would quickly become the only version anyone would want. Of course you can also fit 53/39 rings to a 110 BCD crankset if they are available (Campagnolo don't make them but others such as TA do).

    Actually Shimano to their credit have already adopted a one-size-fits-all 110 BCD system in Dura Ace 9000. This alone very nearly convinced me at one point to abandon Campagnolo and switch to the dark side. I bet the next major update to the top-end Campagnolo groupsets does the same thing.

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