My Zilioli has Kronos levers on it, and of course the rubber is rotting away. These levers were bad to begin with, but I hate to change anything on the bike. I also have a pair of Speedy levers, which came off my other bike because they too sucked. But which are less bad? And would you swap them, or another option, look for a pair of Campy originals to go with the calipers?

There is nothing wrong with Kronos brake levers if set up properly. You need to set them up very loosely. I have them on 3 of my bikes. On one I have the cables going through the drilled bars and they work best of all as they have no kinks in the cable. You do need to file a hole to allow teh cable to route smoothly if you want to run teh cable along the handlebars.

I was just thinking about Modolo Kronos levers this morning, I have a pair, also rotted hoods, but also have a NOS set of hoods in the original packaging, got them with a bike I bought a few years back.

A bit of a head scratcher at first to divine how they clamp to the bars. More comfortable than their non aero contemporaries, but a bit mushy in feel to me. I did not try to set them up loose. I too would only use them with drilled bars, radius the holes to help control stress risers, and Cinelli bars are favored by me over the single thickness type, at least some of the holes can be placed at a double thickness region.

My bars are drilled, but there must be something wrong with the routing. These have NEVER worked well, even when new 20+ years ago. It could be the cables, the calipers or the pads too I suppose. In any case I'm going to replace the cable and housing, and also the pads, which themselves were replaced a few years ago the last time I rode the bike with any frequency and it didn't help much.

I'll check for weird bends in the cables.

i used Kronos levers on my Ciocc for 25 years w/o problems. My handlebars were 3T and not drilled. I routed the cables through the notch on the sides of the lever's housings, then along the handlebars with the handlebar tape covering them and holding them in place. I only recently replaced them with my Campy SR levers and Cinelli bars, more for the cosmetics than function. I really found the shape of the 3T bars and Kronos levers to be more comfortable than the Cinelli/ Campy set up. I rode mine on two centuries in my younger days (now age 70). Today I'm buying a 3T stem and will fit it with the 3T bars and Kronos levers. Of course, my hoods are well rotted. Hope to locate som NOS on eBay.

John

John,

Wayne Bingham, the organizer of the cirque du cyclisme, has NOS Kronos lever hoods available. I believe the cost is about $50, which I find to be very fair. Send him an email and he will look after you.

Thanks - that's awesome. How do I find his e-mail address?

John

John, it's in your PM box.

I sent an email to the second address. It didn't bounce back, so it must've reached him. Hopefully, he still has the hoods.

Thanks,
John

Success! I made contact with Wayne and its a done deal. Of course the bike looks better with the nice Cinelli bars, pantographed Cinelli stem, and Super Rec brakes, but I put some serious miles on it with the 3T bars and Kronos levers. I didn't care for the Kronos pseudo-aero calipers, so I gave them to my kid and kept the Campy calipers. Must look sortta mongrol, but the 3T bars had a more comfortable bend. I gave my really nice Cinelli bars to the same kid. They had the old logo and were new at the time. Last year I got some similar Cinellis but the engraving was not as deep, not as distinct, and, at 37 cm. center to center, they are a little too narrow. They are wrapped with original Benetto yellow plastic tape. I never really liked the Benetto tape that much but it was cheap and functional - it just looked cheapo. Duh - it was cheapo! I used it now more for nostalgic reasons. I'll be wrapping the 3T bars and Kronos levers with Cinelli tape. I couldn't locate yellow, so I'll be using black. What I really don't like about the Cinelli tape is that it has adhesive which I find to be a PITA to remove. I really prefer the non-adhesive cloth tape but Cinilli is what I have.

I'll take a few pix of the bike with the Cinilli/Super Rec set up before I swap it out and post the pix if I can remember how to do it. Something about Photo Bucket or such. I'll also post some pix of the "new" setup. What was I thinking when I bought those Modolos? Aero? Give me a break! Aerodynamic implies laminar airflow. Hard to achieve systemically if there is a rider on that bike.

John

So here I am 4 years later and I never touched the levers. I have the cables I ordered, but I used the handlebar tape on another bike. The difference now is that I finally bought a cable cutter that should work. Its the Park cutter, and it works just fine so far in spite of all the negative reviews I've read.

I'm going to try doing the cables this weekend, and if it works with the Kronos I'll be happy, if not, the Speedy levers are still sitting in my parts box and I can try those. If neither of these work, I'll look for a pair of Campy at the next Brooklyn bike jumble, or maybe eBay. I probably also need pads at this point, the ones on the bike are getting old and hard.

I put the cables on today and the brakes work much better. I used the Jagwire Hyper set that I ordered 4 years ago. As soon as I put it together, after playing around with the original cables, I knew that was the solution. The cable was just so much smoother, even though the old cable felt OK. I also filed down the holes in the bars so that the housing didn't kink at that point. The levers themselves are still not up to par with modern stuff though. My cheap Tektros beat them hands down (pardon the pun). But the bike is all original, even one of the tires (Clement Criterium Seta), but I'll put my extra pair of Keos on to ride it. I still have the Campy pedals, and one of the original clips with the Zi logo. And probably a clincher rear wheel as none of the other tubulars I have are any good, unfortunately I don't have any good gumwall tires to match the front either. I think I still have an MA40/Campy wheel.

I need new bar tape now. I'm going to look for something more old style than the current padded tape. I'll see if I can find some cloth tape locally.

B's Bikes in Williamsburg has a nice supply of cloth tape. We also have several colors of vintage Tressostar tape at the Time's Up co-op on south 6th st.

And my Modolo hoods are still in their package, some projects just have to simmer.

Locate the cloth tape, put sections of inner tube strategically if you must for some "cush".

Too late on the cloth tape. I took the bike for a spin tapeless, and my hands hurt so much after such a short time even wearing padded gloves that I bought Fizik padded tape. It looks OK on the bike.

Would you be willing to sell the Modolo hoods?