Questions about early Campy bar end shifters
 

Hi All,

I recently acquired a mid/late 50's Frejus. It has some original parts (headset/bars/stem/brakes) and others, namely the Campy bar end shifters, that I'm not sure about. They, along with the front wheel skewer, have red plastic covers with "341 Italy" on one side and "REG" in a kind of compressed hexagon. What's the timeline on these (all of the ones I've seen are the later ones with the "Campagnolo" writing)? Also (and importantly), how do they come off the handlebar ends? Do you just carefully pry them off? Thanks for any info!

What you have are aftermarket covers for the levers, made by REG (an independent supplier of things like this and waterbottles, cable clips, cages, etc.), The original Campagnolo covers were probably blue ( I've seen green but those are rare, blue was very common).
Don't pry: these have an expander bolt you access inside the barcon body after you remove the lever: remove the cable/unbolt the lever and remove it/I think the expander bolt on this uses a large slotted screwdriver...maybe an Allen Wrench...whatever tool, you turn it CLOCKWISE to loosen, the opposite of what you'd think.
Then the body can be pulled out of the handlebar end.

Picture!!!

REG is a brand name for the product line described above. the manufacturer is Rampinelli. their other product line is Roto.

But before you remove them, let's see some pictures of that bike!

Hey everyone, Thanks for the great info! I did try to post pics of the bike/components, but I guess they were too large. I'll take some lower res pics ad post them under the "what's it worth" forum.

Camagnolo's own rubber lever end covers were Blue..

like any other bar end shifters the expansion 'bolt' is head in , so you reverse your thinking to be the other way around.

They came in quite a few colors way back in the day: blue, black, red, white, green, yellow.

I saw some blue ones on eBay.

Show me .. all of the ones I have .. <C> part number 1012/3 were just blue ,

aftermarket supplied colored options .. they would not say 'campagnolo', engraved in the rubber mold..

I need some that say Simplex.

As far as I remember, all the ones on the bar ends were blue. The colored ones were for shift levers or skewers, and were not the same size. I could be wrong on this.

I definitely had some Campy covers on barcons that were green, but those were the ONLY color besides blue that I have seen firsthand on genuine Campy covers. And the blue are far more common in my limited experience.