"David L. Johnson" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
> * * Chas wrote:
> > Did Campy ever make a Gran Sport Crankset that used 110mm BCD
chainrings?
> >
> > Supposedly Campy briefly made some Gran Sport cranks that used 116mm
BCD
> > chainring that interchanged with Victory and Triomphe cranks but I've
> > never seen one or even a catalog listing for these.
>
> I'm confused. I recall the Gran Sport derailleurs as being older than
> NR, maybe early '60s. OTOH Victory and Triumph was around 1985 or so.
>
> Ah, but Google comes through again. Nice-looking cranks.
> http://www.campyonly.com/history/timeline.html Scroll to 1973 --- much
> later than the GS derailleurs. Oddly, the '73 catalogue rear derailleur
> looks little like the early GS derailleur, but the front is the same as
> what I had in the very early '60s.
>
> --
>
> David L. Johnson
>
Campy recycled some of their component model names like Record and Gran
Sport over and over without any logic.
In 1973 they cobbled together their Gran Sport gruppo out of existing
components. The gruppo included a 3 arm steel cotterless crankset with a
cheap BB, Nuovo Tipo hubs, their Pista track headset, the old Valentino
piston style front derailleur, cheap shift levers and an extremely ugly,
cheap version of the Nuovo Record rear derailleur plus misc. little parts.
This gruppo was designed to go on mid range bikes. Fortunately because of
component demands and chronic shortages during the 1971 - 74 bike boom,
Campy probably wasn't able to provide many of these crappy sets.
In the late 70s they rounded out the gruppo with cheap versions of the
Record front derailleur, seatpost, 5 arm Record crankset and pedals. This
was an attempt to compete against Shimano and Suntour for the midrange OEM
bike market.
Raleigh used some of the stuff on their Competition GS model and several
smaller Brit bike producers followed suit. A number of other bike mfg..
did the same thing for the European market but by that time most mid range
bikes coming into the US had Japanese components.
In the early 80s Campy brought out their Triomphe and Victory gruppos to
replace the Gran Sport and Nuovo Record gruppos and also to go after the
midrange OEM market controlled by the Japanese component makers.
Neither of those gruppos were very successful because Campy kept flooding
the European OEM market with cheap Nuovo Record gruppos throughout the
first half of the 80s.
Campy continued producing their crappy Velox rear derailleur up until 1974
and even worse the sold their cheap Valentino RDs from 1969 until 1985.
What were they thinking?
Chas.
