I have a Campagnolo Triomphe crankset with 5 bolt 116 BCD. It came to me with the standard 52/42 chainring combo. I've always liked these cranks, they look pretty elegant, however I need lower gearing at my age. I have been searching for a long time for chainrings to accomplish that. The closest I have come is Miche chainrings,which I assume were meant for junior riders. I now have a 45/39 set. My question is: Are there any sources of chainrings for this type of crankset to take advantage of the smaller BCD? Campagnolo doesn't seem to have offered much other than the 52/42. One could go down to possibly 36 teeth for the middle ring with 116 BCD. Why would Campagnolo introduce this size without offering smaller chainrings to fit? I've always wondered about that. Any ideas?

That bolt circle just never really caught on. You sometimes come across them on ebay, but the uncommon tooth counts, such as a 35tooth small ring, bring decent cash. Last one I recall seeing sell was $75, and it sold quick. Hilary Stone in the UK sometimes carries Miche and another brand, but availability is hit and miss.

Thanks for the insight. So it seems rings do exist down to 35 teeth anyway. I'll just keep up the search. I have checked on Hilary Stone before. The Miche rings I found were from an ebay seller in Quebec. He occasionally offers them for sale, but I haven't seen one smaller than 39.

Hilary Stone shows Gebhardt brand 36 tooth rings as being available right now.

Look for a complete crankset with the inner ring you want.
Often the entire set is on offer for less than the cost of the rings.

I did this with a Stronglight 93 (122mm bcd) and ended up paying quite a bit less than the cost of two used chainrings.

Hey, thanks for catching that on Hilary Stone! Now all I have to do is decide if I want to shell out 26 pounds for one. I have kept an eye out for the whole chainset with smaller rings and haven't seen any. Many thanks for all the help.

I like that crankset too, something about the unique angular appearance, but along with the lack of ring choice (of course we are now 30 some years from its introduction so) but always lamented it didn't cone in a 172.5 length

Campy did make smaller-sized rings for these. I've seen 36s and 35s, the latter of which is the smallest possible with a 116mm BCD. I'm looking at a stack of these right now, and they are happily nestled inside their Campagnolo paper sleeves. Don't ask: whoever dies with the most toys: wins.

The real pro setup is to run a 35 and 50 tooth ring combo, which I have setup on my Vitus 979.

I prefer the Triomphe crankset over the Victory, as the Victory featured the PITA reverse-threaded self-extracting bolts, which I've had let loose during a long ride. No: I wasn't carrying the 7mm hex key with me. The Triomphe cranks appear to be marginally lighter, and they conveniently use a standard-threaded extractors.

Buyer beware: many of the Victory cranksets I've seen for sale have stripped 7mm bolts, due to some ham mechanic mistakenly using a 6mm hex key. And I've seen a few Victory cranks on Ebay, missing the self-extracting bolts. These are worthless, and they probably also have stripped extractor threads. The crankarms without the rings are also worthless. 15 years ago, you could not give 116 BCD rings away, now they definitely hard to find.

Hello!

But what if you happen to have the uber rare left handed CampI extractor?

Yes, that is Uber rare. Just because I like to collect: I want one of these. However, since the extractors in the Victory and C-Record crankarms were never meant to be removed, I would never actually use it in real life....

Another setup recommendation: On my Bianchi Rekord I was running a 35-42-53 triple setup, Gerry-rigged onto a Victory crankset using long bolts.

A slow day: so I checked Ebay for Victory and Triomphe cranksets and 116 BCD rings. Nothing useful, and everything hilariously overpriced. Many Victory crankarms with missing extractors, or right-hand thread dustcaps having been forced into them. Buyer beware.

They weren't supposed to be removed? odd. Years ago when I wanted a Victory/Triomphe group for a bike I remembered an importer I dealt with in the early '90s that had lots of odd Campi stuff. According to there website they had enough stiff to build a group but I had to buy it through a shop. A shop I was dealing with in '09 got me a price but for what they wanted I could have bought a VGC Pinerillo and stripped the Super Record off it.

The extractor bolts on Victory and C-Record never needed to be removed. You can both tighten and remove these crankarms without every touching them, simply with the use of a 7mm hex key.

I can only think of two cases why the bolts would be removed:

1. They were mangled because someone tried a 6mm hex key.
2. In the case of a low-life Ebay seller that breaks bike parts down to every component, and then tries and sell the parts for 3 times what the original intact unit cost. I've seen many of these bolts on sale separately on Ebay.

No being a Campy expert I didn't realize there was a difference between Triomphe and Victory. Mine must be Triomphe then as they have regular extractor threads. If you feel like lightening that hoard of 35 or 36 rings I would help in that department. These cranks may be from a lower group on the Campy hierarchy, but I like the aesthetic, and the finish, it's top quality I think.

Think of them as 105 and 600 with Victory being 600. The differences are mostly cosmetic and styling. I think one of the most notable is the hollow cap nut and Gran Sport style adjuster used on the Triomphe brake caliper. The arms of the Victory crankset have a slight curve somewhat like Chorus, the shape of the shifters is slightly different. You often see people selling Triomphe components as Victory.


03/14/17 I posted this at work yesterday waiting for a train to move and just as it did I realized something was amiss. Triomphe brakes do not use the G.S. style adjuster barrel, the pic I saw on Velobase showed in correct adjusters. The shape of the arms is slightly different though. According to the Catalouge 18 Bis. the black O ring adjuster is the correct one for Triomphe.


Pics Courtesy of Velobase