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You can totally strip the 11sp ultra shift right down. It's actually not hard at all. I've one it several times now. check my thread https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/384608/?offset=50

The Athena 11s shifters, I have stripped down the power shift ones, but have had trouble getting them to downshift (release cable) smoothly if I'm honest. The ultrashift version (2010 only) are identical to Chorus/Record 11sp

Heya, if it's the older style 10 speed (pre-2008) then it's not cross compatible. The mechanism in the old shifters is completely different to the later post-2008 style.

I've rebuilt both older 7/8 speed as well as a few of the 11 speed shifters. It's not difficult to rebuild these if I'm honest, if you are just replacing the thumb lever then it's not even all that far into the guts of the shifter itself.

First step identify the year model you have and then look up the spare part. From that you might be able to find an old part on eBay or at least identify a shifter to use as a donor
https://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/v/Manufacturer+Archive/Campagnolo+Archive/Campagnolo+Catalogues/?g2_page=3

Now the other day I felt something really odd, the BB all of a sudden had a serious crunch feeling in it as the cranks went around... something was wrong and I pulled apart the BB

These Campag BB's uniquely have 2x bearings on the DS with a single on the NDS. The NDS bearing (Open on the inside face with rubber seal on outer NDS face) felt very crunchy. I had a minor issue when installing this initially, the BB was binding as I was threading in the NDS cup which eventually went away. My theory is that the NDS bearing cup was sitting out too far, it might have slipped out of position for some reason and some gunk in the frame slipped inside and got caught between the middle shell and the bearing and got into the races which explains the binding, and later the crunchiness..

Anyway, I ordered a genuine NTN replacement bearing with the LLB non-contacting seals. These are more suitable to the lower RPM of a typical BB. I still find it crazy that there are a lot of counterfeit bearings so I ordered this from a bike shop who gets them from the official importer. not cheap at about £20 but still cheaper than a new Chorus BB which is £65. The NDS is held on by a simple wire circlip, so very simple to replace. the DS has some kind of crazy circlip, doing a bit of research it's difficult to remove without damaging it, luckily those bearings were totally fine.

Again, these were quite easy to remove, I had a spare bearing puller. Installing the new bearing just involved purchasing a cheap piece of aluminium tube with an ID of 17mm to match the axle and tapping these on gently. Felt like new, and left both rubber seals on to prevent any other gunk from ever getting in again.

Now for the wheel build. So these are the wheel build specs

Rims: Borg22 AKA Kinlin XR22T. Polished finish for that bling shiny look. I have had good experiences with Kinlin rims, they are nicely finished and build up very round. I also am a big fan of tubeless rims so will run these as such. I will lace these with nipple washers on the DS rear as they will have a fair bit more tension and will need to work hard.

Spokes: Front: Sapim Laser. Rear: Sapim Laser NDS and Sapim Race DS. The Sapim lasers are the super light spoke from Sapim with a 1.5mm middle section and 2.0mm ends. The Race are the standard 1.8mm middle section double butted spokes. I've never built with Lasers before, but I have heard they have a tendency to twist more easily due to their thinness, also not recommended for disc brake wheels. However as I weigh 64kg and these will be 32 spoke 3x front and rear, I'm doubtful I will have any issues.

The Sapim Lasers are noticeably thinner. Weight saving is not insignificant, at roughly 95g for 64 spokes compared to the Sapim Race.




Rear wheel with Sapim HM Nipple washers on the DS. These spread the load on the rim around and also make them easier to rotate. This should be good enough to go up to max 130kgf



The hub flanges on the rear were somewhat thick and the Laser elbows on the outside needed a little persuasion to get around the bend. I was getting slightly uneven tension until I squeezed the spoke pairs several times to get them to bend a bit better, this helped settle them into the holes a lot better and the tension evened out quickly

All done. So a bit over 1700g for the whole wheelset, not too bad for an old 32h set.

Now for the fun bit. Hubs are back together again and I gave them a polish.

Also weighed them, actually pretty respectable given they are a traditional 10mm axle design. A lot lighter than the donor hub

Also managed to track down some correct Record skewers too

Free for a forum donation. Pickup only for now at SE1 Elephant and Castle. Brake surfaces are good, 32h rims, run true. Tubs inflate and hold air but are old and cracked.

Thanks

Ok some hub surgery. First step was to remove the pitted cup from the drive side and also the donor cup. This wasn't too hard actually, I was a bit worried it might not be so easy. However I used a heat gun to heat up the alloy hub shell and used an expanding collet bearing extractor to get a grip on the cup and tapped it out on the other side with a drift. Took a few decent whacks but came out reasonably quickly on both hubs.

Now pressed the donor cup into the hub, again I preheated the hub to make it a bit easier. Luckily I had a bearing press which more or less fit the cup and it went in quite easily.

Now onto the free hub, the bearings in this were smooth but had a bit of play and were oozing black goo, so had probably ground themselves into oblivion over the years. The first one was easy to pull out as was the spacer, but the next were held in by a circlip without any eyes to use a plier... After trying for 1/2 hour I googled this and a common solution was to drill a tiny 1mm hole in the free hub to push the circle out of the way. Which worked a treat.

Bearings are out, lots of black goo so definitely need to replaced, I noticed the factory ones are SKF which is nice. They are standard bearings, 2x 6801 and 1x 6901

Replaced them with SKF ones as well, apparently there are a lot of counterfeit bearings (yes truly) out there so I bought them from one of the SKF official retailers, not cheap the three bearings were a shade under £50...

Now back to the axle and removing the DS cone, I ordered some alloy/steel tubes off eBay with the correct inside diameter so they could be used to remove and install the cone. Worked like a treat luckily, I was a bit worried for some reason that it might not fit, but the cone fit perfectly

I don’t think anyone is perfectly symmetric 😅

So straight away I tore it apart and it looks like it was the right type. It has the DS cone on the axle, looks definitely NOS. Also the DS cup and balls are correct. The odd thing about these hubs is the NDS has 1/4" (6.35mm) balls and the DS has 7/32" (5.56mm) balls

Old axle on the left with shagged DS cone and OK NDS Cone. Donor hub axle on the right with NOS cones

So this is why the Athena hub weighs so much... The free hub itself is a chonkyboi, weights almost about as some whole complete rear hubs! The whole thing is made of steel, whereas the Record one has a Titanium inner and alloy external

Axle saves a decent amount of weight...

Alright... so I decided to go all in and bought a NOS Athena/Veloce 8sp hub. These still have the cup and cone design and should have those spare parts. The DS cone is basically impossible to find new, same with the DS Cup. I had to replace the pawls anyway so it made sense to do this in my mind. Particularly as these hubs are quite rare and special

It came with manuals, even the R clip for holding the free hub pawls when installing... simply amazing as it was like a time capsule from 1997

And man... this thing is heavy. It weighs more than a pair of lightweight modern hubs!

So that was the good news... now for the bad. Basically the drive side bearings are shot
The drive side cone is pitted quite badly, and basically they are near impossible to find new anymore. Also sadly as well the drive side cup is pitted too, this was quite hard to photograph but there is a decent pit in there... I will state for the record that @lot14 was completely honest and I bought these at the risk that they would be like this.

The non-drive side is fine though, perfectly smooth with no pits on cups or cone

It's these two parts that need replacing. The other parts like the pawls and springs you can still get, as well as the NDS Cone and cups.

So need to think about what my options are. It's near impossible to buy replacement cones/cups these days, the only option is to source a NOS hub for donor parts as these two parts are shared with a lot of the older 8/9sp hubs. Or alternately cut my losses and try to find different hubs, the later model '99-'06 with the oversized axles are much better in terms of parts availability and are a fair bit lighter.

However these seem like really special hubs as they are the last of the traditional Campagnolo hubs with threaded axles and adjusted with cone wrenches. After this generation they went to oversized 15mm axles and floating cup/cones which don't need a press to install. However these hubs were all clear anodised from what I can tell and look chunkier, so not as traditional.

🤣.

Back to the OP. On eBay I bought a pair similar condition to this for £80 last June.

Aye! Thanks yep that just confirmed my own suspicions, I was dithering slightly but always loved the look of all polished :D

In other news, I managed to get a pair of wheels from @lot14 a few weeks ago, they were Campagnolo hubs on some Mavic Reflexes with some tubs. I'm only interested in the hubs to be honest, but they appeared to have the 9 speed free hub on them, supposedly they were Chorus hubs.

So after getting home I popped off the free hub and did a bit of browsing on old Campagnolo catalogues... from what I can gather these are not Chorus hubs but actually '97-'98 Record Titanium 9 speed hubs! The tell tale sign is the titanium axles as well as the plastic bearing covers on the front hub. Likely this is a '98 as it has the late style 9 speed free hub which is the same pattern 9/10/11 speed today.

These are quite unique hubs as they are basically similar to the older 8 speed hubs introduced in the early 90's. They are somewhere between the older design of traditional hubs with a threaded axle, and the later '99-'06 design which had oversized alloy axles like most hubs you see today. These from what I can gather are the last generation of Record hubs that Campagnolo released with raw polished aluminium. The later hubs all were polished and clear anodised so aren't as shiny.

Rear axle is titanium and has Campagnolo etched on the end. Tested with a magnet so definitely titanium.


Ditto with the free hub... no doubt here.

Snippet from the 1997 Catalogue

The front hub is actually very unique as I think it's the only Record front hub that doesn't have cup and cone but has cartridge bearings. Also it has a titanium axle like the rear. The grease almost looks new, and the front hub is smooth like silk.

The rear hub is not as smooth as the front but not sure if it's just contaminated or there are worse things hiding in there. I'll have to open them up, but needed to buy some new cone wrenches as the crappy ones I have bend too much and won't loosen the cones and locknut. Fingers crossed it's not too bad inside as these are difficult to get spares for as they are so old.

Also I need a bit of help from you all. Not sure what colour rims to go with, as I love the look of all polished rims, but they are not that readily available in all drillings and options. However black rims are much better in availability, however I’m intending to run gumwalls and I always found it odd looking to get a black, silver,tan and black rubber rings all together.

I did a mockup with the polished wheels from my Cannondale 2.8, and then photoshopped what a black rim might look like. What looks better, black or polished?
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/386203/?offset=50

Also still thinking about lacing. As I’ve done 20/24h (radial front and NDS rear) on a few of my bikes, I’m thinking of going 32h 3 cross on shiny vintage Campagnolo hubs to keeep with the vintage theme… Convince me otherwise

A few updates. Managed to get the front brake calliper to fit with only about 2mm of filing in the arm slots

And did a bit of a mockup with some wheels I had hanging about

I had a bit of a think about what I do with the wheels as I had a bit of a dilemma, the shifters are 8 speed so basically it means you have the following options for cassettes and freehub

• Original Campagnolo 8sp cassettes and freehub. Availability is limited and hubs are generally all vintage
  
• Shimano HG freehub with Shimano 8 speed cassette but use Shimano 7 speed spacers. This is a bit of a kludge but actually works really well as the spacing is the same as the Campagnolo 8sp.
  
  

Availability of cassette choice is a bit limited for both and the max sprocket of the Chorus derailleur is theoretically 26t, although I have heard 28t is fine in reality.

The other option which might actually be easier is to convert the shifters for 9sp, apparently it only requires the change of the index ratchet part. The other plus is that I am going to build a wheel set for this bike so if I am going to spend a bit of coin I would prefer to have some future proofing, a 9sp Campagnolo freehub generally can also fit 10 and 11sp Campagnolo which has compatibility with two of my other bikes… Also I managed to score this on ebay for very little, apparently it still works and comes up on ANT+

So I decided I’d give converting the shifters a go… I got a pair of Veloce 9sp shifters from the late 90’s which still have the pointy hoods

And then pulled out the index ratchet ring from the RH shifter, and swapped it in. Went in with no problem!

Pickup at elephant and castle/warren st or post at cost.

Cinelli 1A stem 100mm. I bought this new and only have ridden this a few hundred km. some marks and blemishes but otherwise vgc £20

Pro Grifon carbon rail saddle 132mm width. This is also good condition with some minor cosmetic imperfections. Super light I weighed it at 165g! Carbon rails have some marks from fitting. Sale because saddle doesn’t suit my bum. £40

Yep. I repainted it and stuck it on my CAAD5
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/384608/?offset=50

second dibs on the Ultegra pedals

Hi, after 53,52 or 39t chainrings in 135bcd Campagnolo in 9/10sp.

Thanks

Slight update
Stripped the anodising and polished the cranks.


Managed to get a used Chorus BB. Odd thing is when installing the NDS cup you could feel bearings starting to bind before it bottoms out. The BB shell is 68mm exactly so not sure what is wrong, googling it turns out that this is not uncommon and I ended up just loctiting it in there before it binds. NDS cup was not exactly loose in any case so should just stay.

I scored a set of Centaur callipers on the advice of @may and it looks like they fit a lot better. Front is only out by a few mm so I think I can file the slots out slightly.

Rear is perfect without any modification

The only thing is that with tyre clearance looks like max is about 28-29mm at the rear as the chain stays are the pinch point. Seatstay bridge has loads of clearance. Fork you could probably fit 32mm or maybe 35mm. Quite odd!

Did a bit of a mockup with some spare wheels…

Dibs on the toupe saddle

Anyone got a pair of these? Must be 8sp or later, so free hub only. Preferably Record or Chorus

Also I managed to strip down and rebuild the ergopowers

They looked a little ratty outside but the insides were actually very clean with what looked to be original grease possibly. Nonetheless I soaked it all in white spirits and degreased it.

I also ordered new G-Springs and spring carriers which are fixed stationary into the body

The ratchet ring then fits inside this and the springs sit into the notches of this index ring. The index ring is spun around on a shaft which connects to both shift levers. It pulls along the cable on one side as well. This gives the indexing to the shifting. Quite neat actually, this is the first time I’ve pulled one apart. Although I know the springs need regular replacing.

The right hand spring carriers are not available anymore so you have to buy the later model one and modify it. Newer model one on right here

It involves cutting off that stub and filing it down so it's flush. Pictured on left here

Then because the little stubs that extend into the shifter body are shorter I had to create little spacers from some aluminium foil to get it to stay put and stick this into the cutouts in the shifter body. You can see this next to the bearing

All done, with a new set of hoods. The funny thing is compared to the later 11 speed shifters, these have a much more definite solid click. The weakness of these old ones is apparently the springs and carriers regular replacing. Amazing thing is though that these shifters are nearly 30 years old but I still can get individual replacement parts for them...

@bright Yeah I noticed that too.. Mind you those tyres in that pic are 30mm tyres though, It just seems odd that the brake reach is just about 4-5mm out of the normal for short reach.

In any case the geometry on this bike is somewhat odd... It's tight AF
Frame is 52cm Sq c to c
Seat tube 76º
Head tube is 74º
Wheelbase is 955mm
Chainstays 400mm

But manages to fit 30mm tyres, in fact I think you could probably go to about 32-35mm on 700c so I'm at a loss at what the original intent was. Seems odd to have so much tyre clearance on such a tight racy geo? Anyone able to shed some light?

Looking for a Campagnolo Seatpost similar to this. Thanks!