Bianchi Upgrade

The Bianchi really irritated me on the Dunwich Dynamo, the chain was clicking, the shifts were rubbish and the chain fell off once. As I said it’s my own fault, I never properly stripped it down and set it up from scratch as I should have, and it hasn’t been touched in 2 years so I think the chain must have dried out. It hadn’t really done enough miles to wear it out but that was how it was acting. And yes, I did lube it.

So I thought, sod it. I’m going to replace the chain and anything else that needs doing. In the back of my mind was an idea to upgrade the groupset as I’ve never really liked the black painted Campagnolo Xenon / Mirage groupset as fitted. They look cheap and downgrade the look of the bike. So I took a look on eBay (bad idea) and ended up buying the following:

Campag Centaur 10sp Crankset + BB	£36.00
SRAM Chain PC1050 Chain 10sp	£24.99
Campag Centaur 10sp Front Derailleur	£5.50
Campag Centaur 10sp rear derailleur	£31.77
TOTAL	£98.26

OK I know I was only going to do the chain and maybe get a better derailleur, but all this lovely stuff was going so cheap.

Before I fitted them, I weighed the new and old components to see how much I was reducing by. That was my rather thin excuse for getting shiny bits for my bike, although I did want a full size 53t chainring (did have compact 50t).

Relative Weights	Xenon	Centaur
Crankset	724g	660g
Bottom Bracket	412g	350g
Front Derailleur	125g	106g
Rear Derailleur	254g	230g

My wife just pointed out all this makes me a total massive loser. But being a blogger is a bit loserish anyway….

She also pointed out the total weight reduction is probably less than a pint of beer. But the way I see it that’s another half pint I can enjoy and still carry the same overall weight.

Bianchi “Danilo di Luca” via Nirone

Bianchi Danilo di Luca

I bought my Bianchi “Danilo di Luca” via Nirone limited edition road bike in 2006 when I had rashly entered the London Triathlon and needed a faster bike than my Marin MTB. It was the first road bike I’d had in 20 years since my old Ken Self 10-speed got nicked.

Blimey… road bikes have come a long way in 20 years. I do really like the styling, particularly the paint job – it’s bare polished aluminium coated in clear lacquer. It was a special release of the new 10 speed cassette in the Campagnolo Xenon groupset (basically the premium spec now entering the lower rung groupsets) – full publicity spiel here. Apparently Danilo di Luca was the Bianchi works rider that year and won something. I’m so not up on road cycling competition. (Update – he didn’t win, he retired early. So I guess that’s why the Limited Edition was released “on the quiet”).

Anyway I’ve had it 3 years now but not done a lot of miles on this bike, keeping it mainly for occasional use and certainly not commuting. As a result it’s still pretty much immaculate. So, I took it out recently to do the Dunwich Dynamo and it REALLY pissed me off. The chain was clicking (yes I did lube it) and the gear shifts were rough, especially on the front. It even dropped the chain once, a fault it’s had since new.

Now I hang my head in shame. I’m a pretty decent bike mechanic but I really haven’t done much to this since I got it. It’s basically as Halford’s set it up (bought it via them as they were our Cycle to Work scheme suppliers) and I don’t think they had previously worked on anything more fancy than a Shimano Altura. To be fair they got it mostly right. Anyway I vowed on that ride to get a new chain and upgrade some of the Xenon groupset which is really only entry level Campagnolo.

So, I did some research, got onto eBay and over the next few weeks I bought some pretty immaculate components. I settled on Centaur, which is below Record, Chorus and Athena but above Veloce, Mirage and Xenon in the Campy line-up.

I ended up getting a full size Centaur crank set (53/39T), Centaur rear 10sp derailleur and Centaur front derailleur, all for under about £60 including a brand new Centaur bottom bracket which usefully will fit my singlespeed frame. I also bought a new SRAM PG1050 chain. SRAM chains are the best.

So on the weekend I took the old dear apart, changed everything over, gave her a polish and spend a happy couple of hours inside drinking wine with my wife and fine tuning the front derailleur with the bike mounted on her turbotrainer. Bike, woman and wine – heaven.

In the turbotrainer

And best of all it runs perfectly now. I sussed out the Campy QS shifters – very clever, for 2 front cogs they have 4 micro-shifts allowing you to fine tune the derailleur poisition to cope with all possible gear combinations. I have set the derailleur higher than it was originally, not only to cope with the 53T crank but also to make use of the extra clearance at the lower part of the front derailleur. It seems to work fine under load and with no load and there is no point where the chain hits although it’s very tight on the clearances. And the chain doesn’t come off.

Next the test ride (can’t do it yet due to hand injury).