Campy Athena

alienator said:

Is anyone using Campy Athena, yet? If so, water your thoughts?

Talked to a guy that had it on the phone. He said it 'felt' very similar to Chorus and up the line, in terms of shifting feel, etc. He also said the levers looked kinda 'cheap' but I wonder about this as they would probably 'look' like Chorus...For the price, I think the best value in the lineup..kinda like Centaur was for 10s. Wish they had aluminum levers tho...oh well.

Peter, I understand that Campy made a running change in some 11s shifters to make the shift feel more distinct. Do know if this change was made in Athena?

alienator said:

Peter, I understand that Campy made a running change in some 11s shifters to make the shift feel more distinct. Do know if this change was made in Athena?

This change was actually for Centaur and Veloce, 2009 levers and they are much 'clickier' after the change. Like the 11s ones always were. Athena will 'feel' like Chorus and on up and now like Centaur. All they did was make the 'notches' in the shift disc deeper, sharper. I actually have two 10s discs, post change, but they are no longer available.

alienator said:

Peter, I understand that Campy made a running change in some 11s shifters to make the shift feel more distinct. Do know if this change was made in Athena?

Your rude manner is simply not appreciated on this or any forum.

nurul said:

Your rude manner is simply not appreciated on this or any forum.

Alienator's comment that you quoted doesn't look rude to me.

cyberlegend1994 said:

Alienator's comment that you quoted doesn't look rude to me.

I am not seeing it. Maybe he was having a bad day and just read it wrong. 😕

I just pulled the trigger on an 11spd Athena "black" group featuring the 2010 Ultra Torque crank and Ultra shift levers. Was considering the siver group but I think the black is going to look better on my current frame + IMO the Ultra cranks/shifters look a little mismatched against the silver.

This will be my first Campy group having previously only run various Shimano 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 speed setups. Ok, some Suntour and Simplex also and I did have Campy DT friction shifters on the earlier setups but that doesn't really count. Will post some thoughts (and some pics) once I've had a couple weeks with the group.

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I have 1 week under the belt with Athena 11-speed. I'd say "new" but the cranks and shifters are 2010 and feature the same Ultra-Shift/Ultra-Torque technology as the Chorus/Record/Super Record-11. I gather they dumbed down the 2011 Athena (and up) to the Power Torque and Power Shift to create some more distinction between the groupsets. There are also apparently problems with installations that don't prep the BB shell properly (i.e. facing, etc) that some speculate the Power Torque sought to remedy. The Power Shift only allows I upshift (as opposed to 3), and the Power Torque crank forgoes the hurst joint in favor of the BB spindle attached similarly to Shimano and SRAM.

For the first 30 minutes out of the shop the stuff worked great. Then shifting got slowly but progressively worse and finicky and 2 hours intro the ride was clicking and sputtering all over the place. An adjustment to the barrel the following day took care of that. Since then it's worked pretty much as I'd expect any racing level component set to work - very well.

It looks gorgeous! Instead of the old blase braze-on FD I went for the clamp-on. Less versatile for swapping bikes when rebuild time arrives but it looks way better than the braze-on/generic clamp setup. All else equal it dropped approx 1/4lb of the bike with the new build from the old Ultegra SL group - we went from 18.01lbs to 17lbs,11oz... not bad for an alu bike. Some Zipp 303 tubbies would bring her close to 17.

One very noticeable improvement was the improved leverage breaking from the hoods, which btw are drop dead sexy and feel great in the hands.

Needless to say I'll probably be riding Campy for the duration.

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