June 2025

My dream road bike

30/06/25 20:19 Filed in: Gear

I tried to get Llewellyn to build me this bike, but he wasn't interested in working with the electronics side of things and said if I conquered the digital side I should get back to him. So nothing yet. Probably ever!

What do I want? A traditional road bike with downtube shifters that are electronic. I was imaging doing it with Di2, in which case the push and the pull of the levers would have to enact different actions. But lately I think AXS is the way to do this, so the levers would have one direction of motion that mimics the click of the shift button on the AXS brake lever (left lever for higher gear, right lever for lower gear, both levers for chainring shift - all programmable from the AXS app). One would probably have to gut an AXS pod shifter for a MTB or the shift mechanism in the road levers to accomplish this easily - short of building the whole thing from the ground up (would have been pretty straightforward in the Di2 space as a Hall-effect sensor or even a magnetic reed switch connected to the shift lever would have sent the signal up the wire to the derailleur). To make this happen would require a nice set of downtube shift levers and a means of turning them into a nice feeling RTC motion (return to centre - every push springs back to the starting place) all while preserving the water-proof nature of AXS shifting. Hence why I haven't done this.
Then I'd need some brake levers that aren't shift levers. To look traditional it would have to be rim brakes, but I like discs and think a traditional metal frame with small round tubes and downtube shifters with hydraulic disc brakes would be nicer to ride. That's actually not too important to my vision as good rim brakes are good and any disc brakes I might come up with that have non-shifting levers for drop bars are also likely to not be the best of disc brakes.
I never had indexed downtube shifting. I went straight from 6 speed friction shifting with downtube shifters to 8 speed STI shifting on the brake levers. At this point I'd happily forego the whole digital shifting experience if I could get some nice 12 speed downtube indexed shifters in Record or Red flavours to go with the rest of the group. That'd be awesome and lovingly anachronistic.

Why?
Why not!

What's going on at Campagnolo?

09/06/25 15:17 Filed in: Gear

I've loved Campag bike parts since I was a little kid. My uncle who got me into riding bikes (and repairing them!) rode Nuovo Record on his race bike - ah those were the days.
Actually I wouldn't want to go back to friction downtube shifting and 5/6/7 speed freewheels, but I would like to apply all of modern know-how to a lasts-forever and looks nice shiny aluminium mechanical group that shifts over an 8 or 9 speed cassette - but I digress.
Somewhere around 9 or 10 spd, I thought Record specifically and Campagnolo in general had lost their way. But the 11 and 12 speed gear is brilliant. EPS never really did it for me (the same as Di2 didn't) - I guess I didn't like the flimsy wires running around on a bike that doesn't treat flimsy well. Both my road bikes had Record 12 on until my replacement commuting frame couldn't accept the front derailleur - and I went Red AXS (and it's brilliant, of course). My race bike still has Record 12 on it. I often mis-shift because I now have 3 bikes (2 outdoor bikes and 1 indoor bike) with 3 different shifting systems (AXS, Record mechanical and Dual-tap). Every day I ride AXS and when I jump on another road bike I flick the left lever to get an easier gear but instead drop onto the small chainring (if not there already). Only have to do that once per ride to remember where I am.
I am reading that Record is no longer going to be offered by Campag. Super Record wireless. Super Record S wireless. Super Record mechanical. Chorus mechanical. No Record. I've long through the Chorus/Record/Super Record trio were too close together in real terms, even if they were quite far apart in price. Chorus always offered 90% of Super Record for about 1/2 the price.
Maybe Record isn't "super" enough? When SR first hit the shops, it was Ti axles, Ti bolts, a few extra holes drilled - all to save a few grams. I broke my SR rear hub axle in a few weeks because even the steel axle was insufficiently strong in freewheel design (drive side bearing is basically in the middle of the hub and the looong unsupported piece of axle just snapped off). But with more modern SR, there have been some fundamental design differences to distinguish. I had SR cranks for a while and they use a Ti bolt to join the left and right crank - but left-hand threaded to ensure you can't use it on Record cranks. SR bearings are a little bit better than Record ones - a higher level of ceramic (CULT rather than USB in Campagnolo's terms).
I would have thought around 40 years of "Record" as a pinnacle group would ensure it remains in the lineup. I guess it has to be more super. And if you take the long view, I started this passage talking about my uncle's NR group. There have been several Record variations: Nuovo, Super, C- are the 3 I can think of.
I'll probably never have another mechanical road group - the AXS stuff is so good I can't be bothered with the hassles of Bowden cables (of course I have a large legacy collection of cables and tools for cables, even coloured cable "donuts") - so going out with Record will be OK with me. It's incredibly good.

And since I wrote this I've seen SR 13-spd is announced. Does that mean SR-S will remain 12-spd while SR goes to 13? Where will it end? 14? 15? 16?

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

My dream road bike

What's going on at Campagnolo?