Originally Posted by Scooby Snax
Not that I wanna start a flame - o - rama, but is it the.... "OOOoohhhh" thing with Campy, as well as the serviceability of their shifters?
I personally like the "OOOooohhh" thing.... Shiney objects do captivate me.
i can't speak for anyone but myself, though timo might be able to back me up on this. i chose campy centaur for my race bike for very specific reasons...
1. rebuildable shifters. i had to rebuild a shifter last year. cost me about $50 in parts and many hours of painstaking labour. replacing the whole whack, if it's been shimano, would have cost a lot more/
2. the front/left shifter is not actually indexed [more accurately, ratcheted]. this allows me to find a whole lot of intermediate trim positions that i can't get on shimano. this is a big help when trying to maintain a good chainline in the muck.
3. the brakes have a quick-release on the levers. on a number of occasions, the ability to open the brakes on the fly, when i've warped a wheel or got completely jammed with mud and grass and twigs, has kept me in the race.
4. i'm not sure, but the spring tension on the centaur rd seems quite a bit stiffer than on a 105 rd. in an y event, i've always noticed crisper shifting with campy.
5. this sounds strange, but for the one season when i raced with 105, i found the sti shifting to be a real pain in tight downhill and off camber sections. throwing my weight around, i found that i'd shift when i braked and brake when i shifted. i found it unnerving.
those are my observations, ymmv.