Dan,
To some, anything not Campagnolo is inferior. Many people considered Zeus components to be cheap Campagnolo knock offs.
Some Zeus components such as the Criterium derailleurs were good copies of Campy older Record derailleurs. Other items like Zeus headsets were far better made than Campy headsets of that era while other Zeus components were... not so good.
Zeus was the only game in town for complete affordable gruppos until Shimano and Suntour brought out their gruppos in the mid to late 70s. They offered a lot of bang for the buck.
I always thought that Zeus brakes were a little flimsy.
Zeus was more popular in the UK than the US.
In France, Zeus was sort of like the French celebration of the Italian wine harvest! ;-)
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
Dan Evans Design wrote:
> hello everyone
>
> found a bike with a couple of zeus components on and woul like to know peoples opinion on them. they are very much like campagnolo nouvo record and from the 70s
> the deraillers are criterium and the brakes are 2000.
> going to clean them as they are plastered in gunk which is good news as that means they are well protected.
> any knowledge warmly welcome.
>
> dan evans
> aquitaine
> france