Ryun Pavlicek has begun riding the new Record gruppo, and provided these comments. (Note: "Comments" are from our tech expert Tim Laflin, who is running and monitoring our Riders Like Your™ road testing program.)
I just brought the bike in from one of those rides that feels terrible, while you are on the road: 38 degrees and raining. Two hours later you can't feel your fingers or feet. You pray for climbs to get warm, but the descents are very painful. It is winter in Virginia, and time to get the base miles in. Despite these conditions, or maybe because of them, I have finally gotten some initial miles on the new Record ten speed group and can give everyone some initial impressions of the group. First, let me begin by admitting that I am a real Campy fan. I have owned and worked on nearly every component they have made good and bad. I like their stuff. Where to begin? Well, as everyone knows by now, the rear cluster has 10 speeds and I guess the question is, for a lot of people, whether or not the 10th cog is worth it. My group originally came with a 12-23 and if this is the cassette you plan on using the answer is probably "no". I don't need an 18t that badly. However, I finally found a 12-25 cassette (Sidebar: so far the worse problem with 10sp is finding parts such as cassettes for spare wheels and extra chains. Hopefully this will change) and that cluster rocks for training here. It is nice to have the slightly lower gearing for winter hills but hold onto the 16t and the 12t for intervals. I can see the advantages of an 11-23 for racing but a 12-23 makes no sense to me. The cassettes are riveted to a carrier and the upper ones are titanium. mmmm. They do, however, creak in the larger cogs after rides in the rain. This is taken care of with some grease on the cassette body but makes you the most annoying guy on the group ride while it is going on.Comment: While building the bike I did notice that the spacers are not all uniform. The MK2 cassette uses different thickness spacers. You will notice it when you put the spacers in the wrong order. I screwed it up when doing the build on the video and put them in the wrong order so the cassette was not evenly spaced. The chain is thin. Very thin. It makes you a bit nervous getting out of the saddle initially. To its credit it hasn't broken. Yet. It has a bad Hyperglide-ish pin system. They recommend a special expensive Campy tool to put it together. The chain is thin. I have been carrying a chain tool just in case. Comment: I bought the magic $60 Campy tool to assembly Ryun's chain and it is like a weird set of vise-grip plyers. It does work, but the price is way out of control. After the fact, we started playing in the garage with another chain and some steel bar stock. I took a section of chain with the magic link installed and another piece that I had broken and joined with a Park CT-3 chain tool. We used a torque wrench to see if apply enough force to break the chain. We found that the 10 speed chain was not more or less strong than a 9 speed chain with the special link. We also found that the chain I broke and put back together without the magic link was nearly identical in strength to the chain with the magic link. The one real big caution is that compared to the 9 speed chain the margin for error is almost not there on the 10 speed chain. If you use a chain tool to break and join the chain you better be good at it or you are going to free fall onto the top tube. A slight miss on the pin location with a chain tool made the chain break under very low torque. I will not recommend guys who are not chain experts to break and join their own chain without a magic link. If you are going to break and join your own chain you need a good chain tool like the Park CT-3 and it will be hard to free up the stiff link after driving the pin in. I took a dremmel tool and removed just a small amount of material from the second set of link holders used to free up the stiff links, so the narrow chain would just fit over. The stock tool is too fat without forcing the chain. I also played with using the Park tool to drive in the magic link pins and it worked well if you are careful. I see little reason to purchase the Campy tool unless you are doing a ton and chains and don't want to take care in driving in the pins. As far as shifting, everything feels much the same as 9sp. Both of them are night and day faster than 8sp. It takes some fiddling to get the chain running quiet over the cogs and the barrel adjustments need to be fine. A quarter turn makes a big difference. Once it is set up though, it is consistent and smooth regardless of the conditions outside. I am still of the opinion that the older metal shifter had a better feel that the carbon levered version. Seems a bit soft but still works fine. Of course, it looks great. Doesn't seem to be any performance difference in the rear derailleur even though they have a carbon plate in it. Still very crisp but the long term will bear that out. The new rear derailleur is very attractive and definitely looks more like the older Super Record especially around the knuckle. Lots of ti bolts and plenty of logos. Which brings me to one of my biggest beefs with the new parts: all the logos. The new logos are all over the gruppo. No one will miss the fact you have 10SPEED RECORD. It seems that the parts, especially the Record ones are visually distinctive enough that all these logos are unnecessary. Unfortunately, you can't polish logos out of carbon fiber. Comment: Campy really pulled out the bag of special hardware on Record this year. Buying an SRP Ti kit for weight savings will only add back weight to this new hardware. The brakes and derailleurs all get a big selection of Ti hardware. I am shocked at how much Ti this groupo has, without a huge price increase. Speaking of ugly, there is the front derailleur. First it has "10 Speed" written all over it. Next, it has a piece of black plastic that clips into the cut out in the cage. That is how otherwise good looking front derailleurs get cheesed up. Apparently although Campy engineers can build a rear mech out of ti, carbon and aluminum, the most elegant solution they could come up with for the front changer was a piece of plastic stuck it a hole that was already there. Neato. No idea how it shifts. Its winter here and that means I have no use for the big ring. Comment: Campy is actually making the plastic piece available so we can all save the front derailleurs from old Record groupos and insert this block of plastic in the cut out holes. This is the cheap way to narrow the cage. As for the other parts, the carbon post is very Gucci and light. Comment: This quite possibly is the coolest part of the groupo next to the derailleurs and shift levers. The carbon post adds some bucks to the groupo, but you just have to go for it on looks alone, because the weight savings is fairly minimal. The brakes have lots of ti bolts but look the same otherwise. I will have more on these parts next time and maybe some comments on the Pro fit pedals if I can ever get my feet out of them. Comment: This is a very common complaint on the pedals. Tailwinds, Click here to send comments to Ryun
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