At 10:14 AM -0800 11/23/09, verktyg wrote:
>The hardness of the Campy headsets ranged from 48Rc to 55Rc! Bearing
>tracks should be 60Rc-62Rc with 58Rc the lowest acceptable hardness.
>
This is interesting... and leads to the question "why headset and not bottom brackets." Campagnolo bottom brackets often last 60,000+ miles with normal maintenance, even on bikes ridden year-round. Were the BB races hardened more carefully, perhaps by a different subcontractor? Does hardness not matter as much on a BB race with its high rpm, low point load?
I often have wondered why Campagnolo headsets can be so troublesome, and yet their other bearings are almost bomb-proof. Few riders ever have worn out a Campy NR pedal...
By the way, the problem appears to have been ongoing - my 1987 Campy Victory headset was pitted after less than a year and maybe 4000 miles. Of course, perhaps the Victory headset really was a re-packaged 1974 NR headset, which somebody found in the stockroom, not knowing they had been put aside because the hardening was incorrect?
Before you laugh, I know a case of a well-known German maker of
high-end products (not bicycle-related) where just that happened. A
set of gears was faulty, but instead of destroying them, they were
put in the warehouse. A decade later, somebody found the gears and
said "Let's use them on the next production run." Nobody remembered
why they hadn't been used in the first place... and off they went to
the assembly line. The company later quietly alerted dealers to fix
the products still on the shelf and offer free replacements for
customers who had bought one.
>I'm certainly going to Hades for what I'm about to say, attacking
>the sacrosanct Campagnolo...
We shall petition the listmaster to remove you, a fate even worse than you imagined! ;-)
(Alert: Note the smiley-face above!)
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com