Originally Posted by
bulgie
Maybe the question should be "why did some riders/mechanics stray from the well-established (and blessed by Tullio) practice of putting the lever on the right side?"
Campy hubs were delivered with the lever on the right inside the box well into the '70s. Though you had to remove the skewer to install the freewheel anyway, so it didn't make any more work for you to flip it on re-assembly.
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Did they picture them "wrong" in all those catalogs, even into the '80s, as some sort of in-joke, or was this really how God and Campy intended them to be run?
My guess is that the pictures have the QR lever on the right for the rear hub because that's the best way to show the freewheel threads and the business end of the skewer in the same photo or drawing.
Pages 95 and 96 of the C.O.N.I. book from 1972 show Campagnolo and Simplex hubsets. The Campy road hubset has the QR lever on the right side; the two Simplex hubsets have the QR lever on the right side for the high-flange set and on the left side for what the caption refers to as the "road hubset with normal flanges."
Never thought about it before, but why not have the rear wheel QR lever on the right, which is usually the stronger hand for right-handed people? How did having the lever on the left become the standard?