Preamble Part 1
It must have been about 15 years ago now.
At a corporate racing event in Hiroshima, light rain kept falling and the road surface was constantly wet.
While conditions weren't unrideable, the course was shrouded in thick fog,
and the race start was delayed until the officials judged the fog had cleared enough.
On the drive home on the expressway during that same time period, it was pouring much harder than during the race,
and my bike—with just the front wheel removed and placed on the car roof—
essentially went through that heavy rain at 100 km/h.
I didn't ride that race bike for a few days after,
but when I finally did, trying to shift the right Ergopower lever to the low side,
the lever wouldn't budge at all.
Some gear-related parts inside the lever must have corroded or something.
At that point, I should have calmly applied oil or, worst case, disassembled it,
but instead I forced it harder and—snap—it broke.
The lever is carbon, with no metal skeleton inside.
Back then with Campagnolo, if you wanted at least a quick fix,
the only option to recover from partial damage to the right Ergopower
was to buy a completely new left and right Ergopower pair.
I actually did that, but I couldn't have imagined at the time that Campagnolo's parts supply service would eventually become better than Shimano's.
Preamble Part 2
I know an acquaintance in the trade who deals in used cycle wear.
Since the market is bigger in the Kanto region or Tokyo for both sourcing and selling,
he's constantly traveling there on business.
One time, he was on a train in Tokyo in the morning holding onto a hand strap when
he overheard two people sitting in front of him saying something like "That nomu-lab diary post from yesterday was crazy, right?"
and hearing that, he got itchy wanting to approach them saying
"Hey, I actually know the person behind nomu-lab,
and I've even got their business card in this bag I'm holding right now."
That's the story I heard from him.
Main Topic
A customer dropped off a Record 11S Ergopower shifter with me.
It's the left one, so front shifting side, but
the lever on the outer shift side is broken.
With Ergopower levers from earlier generations with different bracket shapes,
you could get individual parts right down to each gear and spring inside.
Currently, with this generation and earlier generations of Ergopower levers,
the entire bracket section—or put another way, "everything except the brake lever, its pivot shaft,
bracket cover, and handlebar mounting band"—
is supplied only as ASSY units.
This is actually relatively affordable pricing for the Ergopower line overall,
and the range of years Campagnolo keeps parts in stock for repairs goes back
much further than any other component manufacturer.
If I'm wrong, then sell me the lever head assembly for the 7800
So I contacted the parts distributor who knows Campagnolo best in Japan,
and apparently the Record left ASSY is currently out of stock.
They said they have the same generation Super Record in stock, but
Super Record has carbon applied to the side of the lever—
unnecessarily—which is a visible difference.
There are other differences too, like the material of internal parts and whether weight-saving voids are used,
but that's the only cosmetic difference.
Since the price difference is just a bit over a thousand yen,
I could repair it with Super Record,
but this time I tried a different approach.
There are specific parts in Ergopower levers that wear out or break when they stop shifting properly.
Unlike the old days when everything meant ASSY replacement,
if I can source just that one part, that's what I'll stock.
"The parts that fail are always the same ones"—which means
even if I have multiple junked Ergopower levers,
there's a high chance I can't do a parts swap or 2-in-1 rebuild.
But this time it's a broken lever, so
if I have a junked piece where "the internals are shot but the lever part is intact,"
I can do a repair by harvesting parts from it.
So I reached out to a few people who might have something like that.
Haha... they had one.
Rather than sending me the junked lever as-is,
they actually took the time to disassemble it and just send me the parts I needed.
I disassembled the Ergopower lever.
You can technically swap just the front half without disassembling the rear half (the side near the handlebar),
but assembling the front half first starting from a fully disassembled state
makes it easier to work with how a certain spring hooks on,
and I wanted to clean up rust on the gear parts in the rear half anyway,
so I did a complete disassembly.
↑The left and right in this image are identical except for the broken lever.
I assembled just the front half first.
It's fixed.
I explained to the customer that replacing just the lever part rather than the whole ASSY
is an irregular repair.
We were in a hurry after all.
Bonus Part 1
The person from the distributor who knows Campagnolo best in Japan
somehow ended up at my shop.
Just to be clear, it's unrelated to the lever repair.
Campagnolo's test bike frames used to be Bianchi back in the day, and then Pinarello for a while.
With Pinarello it was the Dogma from when the fork and seatstays were wavy,
so you could spot it instantly.
The current one (the frame in the image above) is a Sarto.
The reason he came was that at a trade show coming to Osaka, on the subway from Shin-Yokohama before catching the Shinkansen,
he saw someone looking at a photo on their phone of a wheel with a center gauge,
and realized he'd spotted a nomu-lab diary reader in the subway
and just came by to tell me about that one trivial thing.
Bonus Part 2
The next day.
I can't write the specific details, but
to give thanks for an irregular repair arrangement regarding
a certain brand's service,
I brought two large assorted boxes of Hōzenji Arare (traditional Osaka crackers) from Shin-Machi
to a certain trade show and handed them over.
I can't say which distributor it was from.
The crab laser beam drawn on the paper bag wasn't pre-planned—
I drew it on the spot improvised.
May it really stand out on the return Shinkansen ride.
They mentioned maybe listing it on Y-auction
It must have been about 15 years ago now.
At a corporate racing event in Hiroshima, light rain kept falling and the road surface was constantly wet.
While conditions weren't unrideable, the course was shrouded in thick fog,
and the race start was delayed until the officials judged the fog had cleared enough.
On the drive home on the expressway during that same time period, it was pouring much harder than during the race,
and my bike—with just the front wheel removed and placed on the car roof—
essentially went through that heavy rain at 100 km/h.
I didn't ride that race bike for a few days after,
but when I finally did, trying to shift the right Ergopower lever to the low side,
the lever wouldn't budge at all.
Some gear-related parts inside the lever must have corroded or something.
At that point, I should have calmly applied oil or, worst case, disassembled it,
but instead I forced it harder and—snap—it broke.
The lever is carbon, with no metal skeleton inside.
Back then with Campagnolo, if you wanted at least a quick fix,
the only option to recover from partial damage to the right Ergopower
was to buy a completely new left and right Ergopower pair.
I actually did that, but I couldn't have imagined at the time that Campagnolo's parts supply service would eventually become better than Shimano's.
Preamble Part 2
I know an acquaintance in the trade who deals in used cycle wear.
Since the market is bigger in the Kanto region or Tokyo for both sourcing and selling,
he's constantly traveling there on business.
One time, he was on a train in Tokyo in the morning holding onto a hand strap when
he overheard two people sitting in front of him saying something like "That nomu-lab diary post from yesterday was crazy, right?"
and hearing that, he got itchy wanting to approach them saying
"Hey, I actually know the person behind nomu-lab,
and I've even got their business card in this bag I'm holding right now."
That's the story I heard from him.
Main Topic
A customer dropped off a Record 11S Ergopower shifter with me.
It's the left one, so front shifting side, but
the lever on the outer shift side is broken.
With Ergopower levers from earlier generations with different bracket shapes,
you could get individual parts right down to each gear and spring inside.
Currently, with this generation and earlier generations of Ergopower levers,
the entire bracket section—or put another way, "everything except the brake lever, its pivot shaft,
bracket cover, and handlebar mounting band"—
is supplied only as ASSY units.
This is actually relatively affordable pricing for the Ergopower line overall,
and the range of years Campagnolo keeps parts in stock for repairs goes back
much further than any other component manufacturer.
So I contacted the parts distributor who knows Campagnolo best in Japan,
and apparently the Record left ASSY is currently out of stock.
They said they have the same generation Super Record in stock, but
Super Record has carbon applied to the side of the lever—
There are other differences too, like the material of internal parts and whether weight-saving voids are used,
but that's the only cosmetic difference.
Since the price difference is just a bit over a thousand yen,
I could repair it with Super Record,
but this time I tried a different approach.
There are specific parts in Ergopower levers that wear out or break when they stop shifting properly.
Unlike the old days when everything meant ASSY replacement,
if I can source just that one part, that's what I'll stock.
"The parts that fail are always the same ones"—which means
even if I have multiple junked Ergopower levers,
there's a high chance I can't do a parts swap or 2-in-1 rebuild.
But this time it's a broken lever, so
if I have a junked piece where "the internals are shot but the lever part is intact,"
I can do a repair by harvesting parts from it.
So I reached out to a few people who might have something like that.
Haha... they had one.
Rather than sending me the junked lever as-is,
they actually took the time to disassemble it and just send me the parts I needed.
I disassembled the Ergopower lever.
You can technically swap just the front half without disassembling the rear half (the side near the handlebar),
but assembling the front half first starting from a fully disassembled state
makes it easier to work with how a certain spring hooks on,
and I wanted to clean up rust on the gear parts in the rear half anyway,
so I did a complete disassembly.
↑The left and right in this image are identical except for the broken lever.
I assembled just the front half first.
It's fixed.
I explained to the customer that replacing just the lever part rather than the whole ASSY
is an irregular repair.
We were in a hurry after all.
Bonus Part 1
The person from the distributor who knows Campagnolo best in Japan
somehow ended up at my shop.
Just to be clear, it's unrelated to the lever repair.
Campagnolo's test bike frames used to be Bianchi back in the day, and then Pinarello for a while.
With Pinarello it was the Dogma from when the fork and seatstays were wavy,
so you could spot it instantly.
The current one (the frame in the image above) is a Sarto.
The reason he came was that at a trade show coming to Osaka, on the subway from Shin-Yokohama before catching the Shinkansen,
he saw someone looking at a photo on their phone of a wheel with a center gauge,
and realized he'd spotted a nomu-lab diary reader in the subway
and just came by to tell me about that one trivial thing.
Bonus Part 2
The next day.
I can't write the specific details, but
to give thanks for an irregular repair arrangement regarding
a certain brand's service,
I brought two large assorted boxes of Hōzenji Arare (traditional Osaka crackers) from Shin-Machi
to a certain trade show and handed them over.
I can't say which distributor it was from.
The crab laser beam drawn on the paper bag wasn't pre-planned—
I drew it on the spot improvised.
May it really stand out on the return Shinkansen ride.