Campagnolo Rear Derailleur Quandry

[Penfold6290]

Athena or Chorus???

Hi folks,

I am struggling a bit with the C Record rear dérailleur on my Raleigh Dyna Tech. It handles the 13-23 freewheel without drama but as soon as I fit a 14-26 or 15-28 (for sportives) it shows its limitation both in terms of range and ability to index. I am aware that the design pre-dates indexing hence the parallelogram is not designed to keep the top jockey wheel close to the freewheel with each shift.

I have used the Athena (D100) rear derailleur from my other Raleigh and it works well, it indexes better than the C Record and has a greater range, so I intend to get a RD to use for the occasional sportive and resort to the C Record for my normal riding. Has anyone had good or bad experiences with Chorus RDs of the era - the one with the A/B angle adjustment on the body? I like the idea as it looks quite like the C Record and I am aware I will need a different Syncro insert to get it to work.

Thanks, Martin

 

[kettlo]

Why not look for smaller front chainrings? Might be easier.....


Stephen

 

[Penfold6290]

Hi Stephen, I'm running 52/39 as it is so I'm on the smallest I can go on the current C Record chainset.

Martin

 

[BigFoz]

I'm running a 53/39x12-27 with an old Record derailleur with out issue - it predates Record Ti, but I think it's from the Synchro era? I bought it new in 1994 as NOS. This setup got me up the Mennock Pass in last year's Drumlanrig ride, and I've also used it successfully with a compact 34/50x13-27 (With a shortened chain)

 

[latman]

Hi Stephen, I'm running 52/39 as it is so I'm on the smallest I can go on the current C Record chainset.

Martin

Victory and Triomphe used a smaller BCD and hence can fit smaller rings , was there a C record triple ?

 

[Penfold6290]

Thanks guys, I may have a more serious (or simply frame specific) set-up issue then. With the 15-28 freewheel installed the B screw is wound out so far it can only be hanging on by a couple of threads, I'm worried it might bend or drop out. I have experimented with chain length and in this configuration (53/39, 15/2 I can't quite strike the right balance, it's either too short for the big gears, or too long for the small gears. I can of course avoid the situation of a long chain by not riding 39/15 so easily sorted.

The main issue is the poor indexing due to the distance between the top jockey wheel and each subsequent sprocket. Campagnolo's 1987 Record brochure extols the virtue of the derailleur design which moves in a perfect perpendicular movement and then in the 1988 Athena & Chorus literature they are shouting about how the skewed paralellogram maintains a perfect and uniform distance under each sprocket for perfect shifting..what a difference a year makes!

I went out this morning with the Athena RD from my other bike, I think this is possibly the way to go, I had considered buying Croce D'Aune but you try finding an Syncro index insert for it!

Martin

 

[47p2]

Some of the older Campagnolo rear derailleurs have a toothed washer behind the dropout bolt that has to be adjusted for larger gears