Unknown Campy Brake set
 

A few days ago some dude came into the bike shop with an older road bike (possibly 80's or early 90's) with some really nice and unusual looking Campagnolo brakes. Of course They were very elegant looking, But the thing that was most characteristic of these brakes was that the head of the pivot bolt on both front and rear brakes was shaped like a small spike, I presume to make the brakes more aerodynamic.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Are you talking about Campy deltas?

http://people.umass.edu/jbarba/delta.jpg

Nope. It was the standard "U-shape" caliper.

Doesn't sound like the deltas. Sounds like athena or maybe c-record? I have a set but I'm not sure what they are.

the athenas definitely have that "spike" feature.

Here are the Athena brake calipers.

http://people.umass.edu/jbarba/athena.jpg

Mystery solved.

What's the level of quality on these?
Are they still in production?

Athena was fazed out in 1998, I think. I believe that it was between Chorus and Veloce.

Yeap thats them.

These are monoplanar Athenas. Look how one arm goes through, not behind the other. They were originaly Chorus, about tine when Record and Croce d'Aune were Deltas. Then, with Chorus upgraded, previous Chorus (I guess with less perfect finish) become Athenas.

knowledge dropped!

Also those Campy monoplanar calipers have a reputation for being not excellent.

Really pretty, though...

Are they really not great for stopping? Considering the direction Campy is going with their brakes for 2007 (not to mention the crank but don't get me started, as it is it's not C&V discussion) I was thinking of picking up a pair of these to put on the Gazelle next year.

Those brakes are for speed control, not stopping.

Damn Susan, you know I have a set of these... and just a few blocks away :)

The monoplanars show up on EBAY every so often and are relatively pricey, took me 4 months to win a set. But damn if they don't look all sexy awesome. Stopping power is average.

There is another (older?) line of campy brakes that do not have the fork and knife monoplanar arms that uses cl.... cone shaped fasteners.

this

Instead of this

The finish on even the Athena monoplanars were amazingly polished. The lower or later models did away with the sexy rocket nose cones and replaced them with mushroom shaped heads.....very disappointing.

I can never decide if I like the Athenas or the Deltas more...

Where is that link?