ALEX888

I live near San Jose, calif and I was thinking about finding a bike shop that I could have some confidence in when working with campy gear. I went into a couple of shops in San Jose and not one new road bike was equipped with campy gear for sale. This weekend I was in Santa Cruz, calif for some beach fun and decided to check out the LBS and went into 3 shops and not one new campy bike. How could I take my campy bike in a shop that does not support or understand campy gear. Then it hit me that if I was new to cycling and went into one of these five stores I would not have a choice or opportunity to see a campy set up. Sad, because I really like by campy set up.

Alex

Szczuldo

Fix it yourself is the sollution. Campy components are hard to find in big bike shops. I have found that Bianchi Dealers have campy components and Shimano Usually, and on top of that a very wide variety of everything. Except usually it is very expensive.

goldfish

learn to work on it yourself.

Thats what i did. Its more satisfying anyways.

Cheers,

grahny

Yeah, just do it yourself. Everything comes with manuals and if that doesn't cut it, sites like parktool are all you need. It's not as hard as it looks... and it will save you the $30 or whatever for a 'tune up' which you can do yourself in 10 min.

Szczuldo

who the hell reads manuals. It's kind of like telling a man that he can stop and ask for directions. It will never happen.

Park Tools website on the other hand is a very useful tool, but I'm still pissed that performance took out their park tools. 5 Minutes before I was about to order some things from there for friends I decided to put in a set of park cone wrenches but alas they had removed them when i noticed my cart cost was 40$ less...So I had to settle for Spin Doctor Cone Wrench set. Hopefully these aren't flimsy because I didn't feel like buying from a different site and have to pay shipping all over again.

kergin

Hozan makes very nice cone wrenches.

rodrigaj

For those of you who say "do it yourself". Anybody have a good place to find out how to:

1- Replace the spring in a brifter.
2- Replace the outer housing to a brifter.
3- Replace a paddle on a brifter.

This would be on a Chorus 2006 brifter.

Thanks... Apologies to the OP for the hijack.

grolby

To assume that a shop that doesn't carry new bikes equipped with Campagnolo components will be unable to work on them competently is quite a leap.

Lazyass

Get a Campy technical manual.

grahny

I confess... I do. I looked at the chorus RD manual and it explains how to set it up in a few easy steps. Took about 30 seconds to get it running smooth. No one was around to see me looking at it though otherwise I would have just pretended to know what I was doing I keep them all locked up in a vault so no one knows I still have them

wideAMG

you are looking for a Ferrari in a land of Toyotas.

you need to find the high end shops in your area. i have about 4 near me that carry campy.

don't take it to a shop that doesn't know campy. they won't have the proper campy tools and won't buy them for your one job and will butcher it.

billallbritten

Branford Bike Http://www.branfordbike.com has helpful information and is a source of the Campy technical manual mentioned earlier. Also, Leonard Zinn's Road Bike Repair manual (available at bookstores, Amazon, etc) has detailed instructions on overhauling campy levers. Branford probably has the parts.

For parts, check also https://www.ochsnerusa-store.com/ You'll need the campy part numbers. You can download the Campy exploded diagrams from https://www.campagnolo.com/jsp/en/doc/doccatid_3.jsp as pdf's and get the part number there.

Many Campy bike shops will do the overhaul, (Branford, Competitive Cyclist come to mind) if you don't want to tackle the g-spring replacement yourself. Don't know about the other two items. You can get the g-springs from quite a few online sources. Speedgoat.com has'em.

Good luck,

BTW, I haven't done an overhaul myself, at $60.00, it's off to my LBS, Granfondo Cycles of Nashville. I may, though, wait a while. No problems in the shifters yet and if I wait, I'll need cables/housing ($40.00) and hoods ($30.00) in addition to the overhaul. That's $130.00 and I'm still using an older Veloce left shifter. At $240.00 -$260.00 for '08 Chorus levers, including cables and hoods and new BB guide, that might be the better move. Also, the '09 Centaur ergo's should work with a 10sp drive train (one rider in the TdF did this) and they feature multiple cogs per swing/press on the right, AND NO G-SPRINGS. Should be out in October. I"ll bet adding the housing and composite lever into your plans will really push things close to the $250.00 mark, particularly if you replace cables.
Bill

Bostic

Slough's Bike Shoppe 260 Race Street in San Jose.
Shaw's Cycles 45 Washington Street in Santa Clara.

Both of those stores deal with Campy all the time. I had my Pedal Force RS built up at Slough's and had my Fuso upgraded at Shaw's. They are smaller shops and not big fancy places but the staff is second to none.

operator

I love how half the posters here think being able to read a technical component manual transforms them instantly transforms them into mechanic super hero.

ALEX888

I agree with the idea of working on your bike but I think it’s also good to establish a working relationship with local shop you can trust. I would like to do some upgrades I want to be sure I get compatible components. I don’t want to support a shop that won’t show some support for the product that’s important to me. I m not riding all campy top end gear and its works just fine so there is no excuse for not having one bike equipped with lower end campy gear for comparison..
Bostic thank you for your recommendations I will check them out.
Alex

Lazyass

If you cannot look at a campy tech manual and figure out how to change the spring, then you aren't the most intelligent individual in the world.

kster

I use couple of shops in the East Bay (Livermore and Dublin) but you can search for shops from Campagnolo's site:
https://www.campagnolo.com/jsp/en/proshop/index.jsp

grahny

Bike components aren't the most difficult thing in the world to figure out. Reverse engineering is as easy as it gets.

John H.

Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance has excellent step-by-step Ergoshifter rebuild instructions.

superslomo

Checking out shops here in NYC, the typical pattern is that almost all the bikes are somewhere in the Shimano range, and then there's one glittering $8000 machine with Campy Record hanging on the wall out of reach.

absolutealex

Go to Velotech in Palo Alto they're on 732 Emerson, they're great guys over there plus knowledgeable and very reasonable with labor prices. They're also a campy dealer.

nagsheadlocal

Go to youtube.com and enter "Campagnolo" in the search field. You'll find a number of Campy install and maintain videos posted there. I don't know if these were intended for dealers or what, but there they are. Also a few videos of vintage Campy rebuilds - some of these were posted by the folks from CampyOnly.

You'll also find a teen queen named Renata Campagnolo and some singer-songwriter type named Fabio Campagnolo, but you can filter these out.

Phoible

I can second Shaw's Lightweight Cycles. Terry Shaw has some strange ideas, but he knows what he is doing. Has encyclopedic knowledge of bicycles, and can repair just about anything bike-related. Plus, he'll talk your ear off for free.

Tylox

I'd check out Velotech or Palo Alto Cycles. Velotech is probably going to be cheaper though.

absolutealex

I've had work done at both Velotech and Shaw's, I would chose Velotech over Shaw's anyday. Palo Alto Bicycles seems too impersonal for me.