A New Campagnolo Convert...

Last night I did it.... I made the change! My Felt F5C is now "kitted out" with Campagnolo Chorus shifters, brakes, and derailleurs! This was my first attempt at doing any major work to a bike and I was truly surprised at the fact that at the end of the evening my bike actually still worked. The bottom bracket and cranks are next, but I didn't have the tools to complete that part of the installation.

It all started with a bottle of one of my favorite beers, Double Arrogant Bastard Ale and a couple of Portabella "veggie" burgers. Believe it or not they are actually pretty good. All of the folks at Grape and Gourmet are great people and they usually have this and many other awesome beers in stock.
The first step was very simple, strip all of the Shimano components off the bike. The only part of this process that proved challenging was figuring out that I needed to have the rear shifter all the way to one side to get the cable out.
Next step was installing all the Campagnolo components. The installation of the shifters, brakes, and derailleurs went smoothly. When I got to installing cables and housing I found that things could get a bit frustrating. As can be seen in the picture to the right, I found out that taping the cable housings to the bars early in the process is a big mistake. That is when you don't really know what you are doing. I think I re-taped the housing to the bars three different times. One time I wasn't paying attention and tried to make the left lever control the rear brake instead of the right. Second time I found that it was very difficult to get cables into the housing when they were taped in place. Another time I just didnt like the way the housings were routed. I finally decided that I should just wait until the end of the process to do the taping. I will chalk that up to learning the process.

After an hour or so of playing with cable and derailleur adjustment I took the bike out for a ride and I was surprised found that it shifted smoothly! I forgot how rewarding projects like that can be. Having something tangible at the end of a few hours of work feels pretty good. We'll see how well I actually did when I get up to Fat Frogs to have my work inspected and the crank and bottom bracket installed.