[David9694]

Following my triumphant win of the Christmas present competition, here’s a few notes on how I got on.  Happy Christmas to me (from me) a Centaur 11s groupset. Sorry, I’m very late to this, I know this kit been out for a few year now. 

Nicely boxed, but I can’t begin to describe how rubbish is the printed information you get with each component.  Shimano’s isn’t perfect either, but this seems full of bad translations and witters on about when I should see a “specialised mechanic”. For example, I nearly had to look up which Allen bolt was which to adjust the  H-L on the RD, although the C screw adjustment guidance was refreshingly clear.

I knew I’d have to change the freehub on my elderly Mavic Krysium R/W – that was a new job to me.  But when I tightened up, either the smallest cog was only half on the freehub or when I removed the 10s spacer, the back of the 11s Centaur cassette jammed against the flange. So we’re back to a 11s Shimano cassette for now  – compatible by some happenstance on the part of Mavic, Shimano and Campagnolo. 

The brifter cable clamps needed backing off (which at least they tolerated without dropping to bits) x4 turns to mount them because of the shape of the plastic casing.   Fitting the brake cables was pretty painless; shift cables were supplied installed, but I have no idea how I’d change them and there are no clues in the supplied instructions. 

There were 5 silver ferrules supplied, clearly too small for the brake cable outer, but a loose fit on the shift cable – I thought a bit of compression was what reinforced the cable outers?

The biggest design difference as against Shimano is in the B/B and crankset.  There’s no history of Campagnolo cranks falling apart, of course, but the decision to mount the bearings on the cranks seemed a strange one to me.  With the open hollow crank ends and bearings located right in the extremes pretty exposed, I’m glad this is a fair weather bike. 

Owners will know this, but Campag have addressed the vexed issue of compressing and attaching a crank to the axle by giving each crank half each – they mesh and soundly bolt together in the middle.  

The Record B/B cups are simply that, but the spring-clip needed for the R/H cup suggests a design fail being swerved pretty coarsely. 

It looked like on Park Tools you can screwdriver off the bearing circlip and use a bike-sized bearing puller, but you would need a (dedicated?) hollow punch to install a new one.  My old-style Shimano B/B cup tool fitted.

The chain has got of those snap-off joining pins (that Shimano have stopped doing), so we’re on KMC until I can save £180 (for real?) up for the recommended tool.  My chain tool includes a clamp on the far side, I assume it will to the job? 

Topic

[Miller]

Campagnolo chains are

Campagnolo chains are excellent and so is the pin joining system although it does require careful installation. I’ve got by in recent years with a BBB Proficonnect chain tool, £30, which has a peening function. This tool works fine with 11s and 12s Campag chains. My Ekar 13s chain wouldn’t fit… until I filed the chaintool prong to be slightly thinner, then an Ekar chain fitted fine and pin installation was straightforward. The full fat Campag chain tool is a beautiful thing however, for those who appreciate quality tools.

UT chainsets are excellent, I have over a decade with them. The bearings are a little bit exposed I think, my experience is if you hear a creak it’s probably the LH crank bearing being rusty on its outside face. When swapped all is silent again.

Campag packaging instructions are scant but their assembly videos on YouTube are very good.

 

[matthewn5]

The Park chain tool with

The Park chain tool with peening anvil works fine. I find Campag chains last about twice as long as Ultegra chains used to last me. Never had a peened rivet fail (though I’m mostly using quick links these days).

And as velotech says below, all the detailed instructions can be found at campagnolo.com with very detailed descriptions for how to install and adjust everything. Good luck and enjoy the difference!

[Bigfoz]

Have to say as a long time

Have to say as a long time and multiple (7 bikes) user of Camapg – I have about half the fleet on genuine rivetted Campag chains and half on SRAM with joining links. Tend to have historically used the genuine chains on the “good/race” bikes, and the SRAM on the training/winter type bikes, thus reducing costs substantially. I find no discernable difference in drive or shift performance.  SRAM chains wear faster, but by the nature of my usage profile, that’s to be expected as they get the worst conditions to operate in.

[wtjs]

I’ve only ever snapped up
I’ve only ever snapped up Shimano components
Subtle and subliminal ‘pasta cranks’ propaganda from HP!

[hawkinspeter]

velotech_cycling wrote:

Spoiler alert – I am Campagnolo’s lead tech in the UK, providing technical training for retailers, wholesalers and OEM, so the info here is from the factory …

One of the challenges that all manufacturer’s face in instruction leaflets, is actually just how much into to give. Until around 2009/10, Campagnolo used to provide a deeper set of fitting instructions than they do now.

The challenges for all makers now are around paper (yes, really), how many languages it’s now appropriate to cover – and liability.

I’ve only ever snapped up Shimano components, so don’t have experience with Campagnolo stuff, but I think Shimano should do away with their paper-based installation instructions. They’re rarely useful as most of the time, it’s obvious how to install them and so the paper gets ignored. I think manufacturers should just provide a perma-link (i.e. not move the location once it’s published) to detailed instructions that can be easily read on a smartphone etc.

[David9694]

Thanks – much appreciated. 

Thanks – much appreciated. 

That’s comforting about the cassette fit and the smallest cog.  At 11t, I’m unlikely to get much use out of it (which is why I like the 13t Miche products, although not always easy to get in the UK) but I was having nightmares about it all falling to bits on me under strain.  I’m not the most powerful rider out there, but my local hills will search out any drivetrain weaknesses, such as an unpeened chain link or a cassette hanging on by a thread. 

[mark1a]

ktache wrote:

It peens. Pilot Pete bought it up a while ago, head of rivets are slightly flared, giving more strength, the inserted pin is not, peening it gives it more of the strength of a standard rivet. As far as I’m aware…

Couple of questions please… is the peening requirement specific to Campagnolo chains with hollow pins? Is the £180 tool specific to 13 speed chains? I see the Park Tool CT-6.3 is available for just over £30 and has a peening anvil for up to 11 speed Campagnolo chains, which would accommodate Centaur. 

The only Campagnolo bike in the fleet is the La Vie Claire Hinault 753R, which has a 6 speed KMC with quicklink, everything else is either SRAM, Shimano, KMC or Gates, I have to say the chain peening requirement isn’t attracting me to a newer Campagnolo build.

[Rendel Harris]

ktache wrote:

It peens. Pilot Pete bought it up a while ago, head of rivets are slightly flared, giving more strength, the inserted pin is not, peening it gives it more of the strength of a standard rivet. As far as I’m aware…

Thanks, that makes sense. Although in 40-odd years and hundreds of thousands of miles of (mostly) doing my own mechanics I’ve never had a linking pin break, nor a quicklink come to that, so I’ll probably continue to ride my luck rather than spend £180 on a tool for it. Couldn’t you just turn the chain tool around and screw slightly into the non-peened end with the other end against a solid surface to stop it being pushed back out for the same effect?

[ktache]

It peens. Pilot Pete bought

It peens. Pilot Pete bought it up a while ago, head of rivets are slightly flared, giving more strength, the inserted pin is not, peening it gives it more of the strength of a standard rivet. As far as I’m aware…

[wtjs]

Very informative!
Very informative!

[velotech_cycling]

Spoiler alert – I am

Spoiler alert – I am Campagnolo’s lead tech in the UK, providing technical training for retailers, wholesalers and OEM, so the info here is from the factory …

One of the challenges that all manufacturer’s face in instruction leaflets, is actually just how much into to give. Until around 2009/10, Campagnolo used to provide a deeper set of fitting instructions than they do now.

The challenges for all makers now are around paper (yes, really), how many languages it’s now appropriate to cover – and liability.

The liability question is the tricky one. When I provide online technical help to final customers or shops, I always have to be very aware that a customer who has a problem after following the advice I’ve given, might come back with a “you didn’t tell me that so-and-so had to be done” and that is so much more the case for manufacturers that are basically putting  a product into the market & then only ever have two options – support it via mechanics that they have tried to ensure have either training or access to technical information – or support it directly themselves.

Shimano have si-shimano.com, SRAM have a technical downloads are and Campagnolo have the Documentation area on their website, all of which contain the kind of information that the user above wants – how to access the cable installation port on the levers, for instance … what’s provided with the component is more akin to a “quick-start” guide.

On the cassette body issue, not all Mavic hub designs will properly accept all of the Campagnolo cassettes – which is more of a Mavic problem than it is a Campagnolo one – it’s known amongst mechanics familiar with Campagnolo, in any case, that sometimes it is advisable to fit a 1mm spacer hehind the cassette to bring the cassette closer to where it should be, relative to the dropout. The final cog on the cassette usually only engages around two thirds of it’s depth on the end of the cassette body, anyway. The spacer helps when swapping between wheelsets, as well, where customers may have a set of Mavics and a set of Campag, say – not all makers’ cassette bodies “sit” in the same place relative to the locknut.

On the chain, Campagnolo have long said that a riveted joint is the most secure. They have now, in 12 & 13s, yielded to market pressure and make, in house, alongside ther own chain production, a joining link – but my own advice is still rivet for absolute security. To do that well requires a tool and because they too are made in-house, to be both very high-precision and durable, they’re relatively expensive. There’s no way around that.

There’s unlikely to be an 11s joining link made, now – 11s is only available in Centaur, all the otheer groups are now 12 or in the case of Ekar / Ekar GT, 13s.

UltraTorque is probably one of the most misunderstood elements of Campagnolo design. You have a fixed distance between the bearings and some variation in distance between their locations, whether they’re screwed in or pressed in. To fix that, you can, as Shimano did, have an axle that slides along the axle and is anchored with two pinch bolts (essentially, a threadless headset turned on it’s side). That means a bulkier crank which leads to a wider Q factor, as does using a threaded ring, in the fashion of SRAM DUB – the crank width is better controlled but the threaded ring takes up 5 or 6m of BB axle length, so pushing the Q factor out as it’s necessary to maintain some degree of ankle clearance, too (you can’t just make the LH crank straighter to compensate, or at least, not a lot straighter) …

UTs Q factor in 10 and 11s is the same as their historic square taper cranks (146.6mm), with an improved U factor (ankle clearance). It’s a fraction wider in the most recent 12s & 13s cranks (151mm).

In Campagnolo’s case, the use of the wave washer applies a known pre-load to the BB bearings, so long as the BB is within the +/-0.8mm of width tolerance away from nominal. This exceeds the +/-0.5mm of width tolerance specified in most press-fit mountings and allows for a sufficient amount of dimension error from necessary practices like facing, in threaded mountings (English, Itlaian, T47, etc).

The spring clip anchors the RH crank in it’s location relative to the frame, allowing it a very small side-to-side movement (of the order of 0.3mm total) so ensuring that the chainrings are held in place relative to the front derailleur, to make front shifting secure and accurate – it’s name of the “safety clip” is a long-standing mis-translation – in English it should arguably be called a “securing” clip, but the word used for both can be the same in Italian …

Finally, why anchor the BB bearings on the axle rather than in the cup? In any cartridge bearing system that is going to be taken apart, there needs to be one slip-fit and one interference fit. General convention is that the slip fit is on the moving element, the slip fit is on the static. Think of a wheel bearing – the hub shell is moving, so the bearing is a press fit into that, whilst it is a slip fit on the axle.

In a BB, the moving element is the axle, the fixed element is the cup (it’s useful to consider how a sealed bearing square taper BB is made).

Shimano reverse the convention and sleeve the BB bearing down to make a slip fit on the axle, having the bearing (which is actually the same size as Campag’s), captive in the cup, where it’s press fitted. If the bearing seizes, the axle can then turn in the sleeves but may become scored or damaged in the process. Experienced mechanics see this from time to time. In Campagnolo’s case, if the bearing seizes, it will turn in the cup, which is rather cheaper to replace, in the event of damage, than a HT crankset.

Meanwhile, the axle can be split and the beraing cleaned and lubricated easily because the inner face is “open”, so improving opportunities for maintenance, rather than replacement.

Sorry, that was quite long but hopefully you can see that there are reasons why things are the way they are – there are a lot of different ways to engineer things, Shimano take one approcah, SRAM another and Campagnolo a third – sometimes that is driven by paternt, sometimes by what is fgelt to be best engineering practice, sometimes by cost – or maybe an element of all 3 ,,,

[Rendel Harris]

Quote:

The chain has got of those snap-off joining pins (that Shimano have stopped doing), so we’re on KMC until I can save £180 (for real?) up for the recommended tool.  My chain tool includes a clamp on the far side, I assume it will to the job?

Just push the pin through with the chain tool until it’s flush on the side you’re driving from, snap off the end with pliers, check flush on the inner side, lightly file if not. What does the £180 tool do extra?

[hawkinspeter]

I thought that the cable

I thought that the cable ferrules are there just to prevent damage to the end of the cable outer and the frame as there could be a sharp bit left after cutting. They also keep the outer aligned nicely in case the cable was cut at an angle. I don’t think they need to do any compression as that happens from the tension of the inner cable.

[David9694]

At £180, it’s taking the peen

At £180, it’s taking the peen. 

[ktache]

Ah! The peening tool…

Ah! The peening tool…

[Author]

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