Weight Weenies

I'm planning purchase of a compact (110 BDC) Campagnolo chainset, and absolutely integral to this choice for me will be the ability to fit a 36T chainring. Campagnolo, in their idiocy, no longer make these, although up until now I have been confident that there are plenty of 3rd party alternatives available, e.g. TA Nerius, Stronglight CT2.

However, I just came across this:

http://www.starbike.com/php/catalogue.php?lang=en&manufacturer=Specialites+TA#a57d2fe49c58ba646171e2a59716b51e

Note the "only compatible with Campagnolo CT 11-speed cranks until 2010 (not 2011 or newer)"

What the **** is that about?? What's different about 2011 UT? Is the above statement true, and if so, does it apply to other 3rd party 11sp compatible chainrings, such as Stronglight?

If Campag have changed the spec of ultratorque just to prevent other manufacturers making a product available to satisfy a demand that they refuse to address themselves, I SWEAR this will be the last straw and I will sell my record groupset and buy SRAM Red...

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The chainring bolts, except the one in the crankarm, now screw directly into the inner chainring. No requirement for a nut now.
It's lighter and stiffer. I believe Stronglight are bringing out compatible rings. I'm sure TA will follow suit.

I'd be interested to know how much lighter and how much stiffer it actually is. I'd also think it might work out more expensive if you strip a thread. What's cheaper, replacing a chainring or a chainring bolt?

I think it just makes a stiffer "system" as a whole. The bolts probably more likely to strip or shear first rather than the chainring.

5 8 5 wrote:The chainring bolts, except the one in the crankarm, now screw directly into the inner chainring. No requirement for a nut now.
It's lighter and stiffer. I believe Stronglight are bringing out compatible rings. I'm sure TA will follow suit.

Thanks for the info. So it's not really the crankset that's incompatible, just inner chainring / chainring bolt combinations? Or are the holes on the spider a different diameter?

Good to know that the 3rd party companies are catching up quickly in any case.

stephen@fibre-lyte wrote:I'd be interested to know how much lighter and how much stiffer it actually is. I'd also think it might work out more expensive if you strip a thread. What's cheaper, replacing a chainring or a chainring bolt?

Yup, I must admit it sounds a bit like a load of marketing tosh to justify inverse standardisation just to try to get us to buy more stuff, or more of their stuff...

I have a theory that the reason it's so difficult to get 50/36 cranksets these days from the big 3 is that they know full well that it's the perfect universal setup, and that if more people cottoned on they would only be able to sell one product (i.e., "crankset") rather than two ("standard" and "compact").

PezTech wrote:.....

I've never been sure how to interpret that in forum replies... Are you saying I should have done my research before posting?

I wrote about the chainring bolts but was waiting to confirm that the bolt sizes are also still not the same as others...

The same reasoning for making their shifters not fit an industry wide cable standard.




Yeah, I hate that super loose feeling you get from overly flexy chain ring bolts

Campy do seem to be worse for this kind of stuff than the other two. Honestly, some day they ARE going to push me too far...

since campy doesn't make a BB30 crank set, i bought a SRAM Red BB30 crank, and used Stronglight CT2 130 BCD Campy compatible chain rings. you get over the fact that you aren't using a Campy crank quite quickly. besides, you can always use other high quality crank sets like the Cannondale SiSL, Rotor, FSA, etc.

r_mutt wrote:since campy doesn't make a BB30 crank set, i bought a SRAM Red BB30 crank, and used Stronglight CT2 130 BCD Campy compatible chain rings. you get over the fact that you aren't using a Campy crank quite quickly. besides, you can always use other high quality crank sets like the Cannondale SiSL, Rotor, FSA, etc.

I thought about doing something like this, one of the things that put me off being the campy BB30 press-fit cups that are loctited (loctitened?) into my BB shell. Also, the campy SR crank with the Ti spindle option (585g) plus the 30g cups is only actually about 10 or 15g heavier than the Cannondale SiSL + spindle, bearings etc (603g?). I also figured that if the campy crank works for Gilbert and Voeckler it must be stiff enough for me...

Just been doing some research on potentially compatible rings.

There is this advertised on the Miche website, which is clearly exactly the sort of thing I'm after, but it doesn't seem to exist yet (other than on the Miche website) - http://www.miche.it/en/news/82/78/Miche-technical-news%22

Following up on 585''s tip I went to the TA website. No mention there of anything other than the standard (i.e. presumably pre-2011) campy 11sp, CT2 rings - http://www.stronglight.com/stronglight/page.php?nom=produit&keyProd=Campa_Compact_TYPE_D

Notice however that this is prominently labelled "Type D", and on the left-hand panel you can see that this is the latest in a line of campy compatible chainrings, A, B & C being older versions.

So I did a search on "Type E" just on the off-chance, and came up with this -
http://www.probikeshop.com/stronglight-7075-internal-chainring-campagnolo-type-e-110mm-11s/66777.html

I'm guessing that this might be exactly what I'm after, although there seems to be absolutely no information anywhere about what the CT2 Type E is and how it differs from Type D. The picture above is actually of the type D, but for the outer ring they have a picture of the actual Type E - http://www.probikeshop.com/stronglight-7075-campagnolo-type-e-110mm-11s/66776.html Unfortunately that doesn't tell me whether the inner ones are tapped or not...

Yes the type D are a for pre 2011 chainsets. The 4 non crank bolt holes are visibly too big to be threaded for chainring bolts.
It certainly makes sense that type E is for 2011 chainsets onwards. I have noticed that Stronglight are quite lax about updating their site.

I noticed that after the release of 11 speed, Campag compatible rings were listed in webshops but there was no mention of them on the site for quite a while. I thinks it's a similar case now.

It might be worth taking a punt and purchasing them. You can always send them back if you don't use them.

Moreover the screw that goes into crankarm on SR UT Ti has a weird "security" torx pattern, you can
not unscrew it w/regular torx! What gives? Do they want us to get a $50 special wrench for
that one screw? What is the purpose, so nobody steals my chainring off the bike?

SL58 wrote:Moreover the screw that goes into crankarm on SR UT Ti has a weird "security" torx pattern, you can
not unscrew it w/regular torx! What gives? Do they want us to get a $50 special wrench for
that one screw? What is the purpose, so nobody steals my chainring off the bike?

That "security" bolt is nothing more than a means to tell if it's been removed or not. It's just a plastic bit in the middle that breaks off with a pair of needle nose pliers or the like. Then you use the normal torx bit to remove it. Exactly why it's there I'm not sure. Maybe to deter people who don't know what they're doing from removing it, no idea.

I've just had a reply to an enquiry I sent to Probikeshop about the Stronglight rings - the Type E is indeed threaded, for use with 2011 & 2012 ultratorque. So:

Stronglight CT2 Campagnolo "Type D" => 2009 & 2010 11 speed Chorus, Record & SR, non-threaded type.
Stronglight CT2 Campagnolo "Type E" => 2011 & 2012 11 speed Chorus, Record & SR, threaded type.

I fully expect my payment from Stronglight's marketing department in the post..

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