I've been out of the sport for a few years so please excuse my ignorance. I was wondering what happened to Campy's Delta brakes. Those things looked like a million.

I've been out of the sport for a few years so please excuse my ignorance. I was wondering what happened to Campy's Delta brakes. Those things looked like a million.

They were works of art, but became both too heavy and too expensive to keep in the lineup. Also, they had a reputation of not working very well, but I will say that is mostly because people didn't set them up right. Properly set up, they were amazing, but you had to leave the pads much firther from the rims than most people thought. They had a cam type action with the scissor spring and so they needed a longer "throw" to get them to work smoothly. But the real reason they ended up discontinued was because they became far to expensive to manufacture and to maintain. Current Campy dual pivot brakes work just as well, are lighter, and much cheaper to make (but they just don't have that same look about them...)

I had a Campy rep tell me that if they were to make the Delta's today, with today's economy, they would need to price them at over $550 to make a profit on them. I guess that explains why a NOS set still goes for $300+ on eBay. One good alternative if you can find them would be a NOS set of Croce d'Aune Deltas. They didn't use the same scissor springs and you can spot them right off the bat because the springs on them are exposed from the rear, where the Record Deltas are completely contained inside the brake's body. The Croce sets tend to sell under $150 when you can find them. They aren't quite as nice feeling as the Records when set up right, but when set up how most people set them, it's hard to tell them apart. (In other words, if you set them up like regular brakes, these will work just about as poorly as the Records, but if you set them up right with about 3 to 4mm between pad and rim, they Records have much better modulation and feel to them, as well as a huge mechanical advantage from the scissor spring.)

I would love to see Campy re-issue those brakes, C-Record derailleurs with Retro Friction shifters, and the High Flange C-Record hubs. It's my opinion that the absolute greatest component group ever designed and built was 1988 C-Record with HF hubs and Deltas. A mint NOS groupset like that is still my Holy Grail of cycling. But I have only really come close to being able to afford nice stuff like that in the past several years. At the time it was out, I was a freshman in high school and there was no way I could have riden that group.

Hope that answered your question, and then some.

Russ

Russ- As always a great post. I was a Senior in HS when I got a bike fitted with C-Record cranks. That was about all I could afford but the cranks were the center piece of the bike and I had to have them. Now 16 years and four bikes later that bike with the C-Record cranks is still my prized possession. I am hoping to be able to afford a complete C-Record group down to the Delta brakes to one day build up my trusty old Scapin the way it should have been back in the day. But for now I'm satisfied with just having the most beautiful cranks to grace a bicycle. :cool:

They were works of art, but became both too heavy and too expensive to keep in the lineup. Also, they had a reputation of not working very well, but I will say that is mostly because people didn't set them up right. Properly set up, they were amazing, but you had to leave the pads much firther from the rims than most people thought. They had a cam type action with the scissor spring and so they needed a longer "throw" to get them to work smoothly. But the real reason they ended up discontinued was because they became far to expensive to manufacture and to maintain. Current Campy dual pivot brakes work just as well, are lighter, and much cheaper to make (but they just don't have that same look about them...)

I had a Campy rep tell me that if they were to make the Delta's today, with today's economy, they would need to price them at over $550 to make a profit on them. I guess that explains why a NOS set still goes for $300+ on eBay. One good alternative if you can find them would be a NOS set of Croce d'Aune Deltas. They didn't use the same scissor springs and you can spot them right off the bat because the springs on them are exposed from the rear, where the Record Deltas are completely contained inside the brake's body. The Croce sets tend to sell under $150 when you can find them. They aren't quite as nice feeling as the Records when set up right, but when set up how most people set them, it's hard to tell them apart. (In other words, if you set them up like regular brakes, these will work just about as poorly as the Records, but if you set them up right with about 3 to 4mm between pad and rim, they Records have much better modulation and feel to them, as well as a huge mechanical advantage from the scissor spring.)

I would love to see Campy re-issue those brakes, C-Record derailleurs with Retro Friction shifters, and the High Flange C-Record hubs. It's my opinion that the absolute greatest component group ever designed and built was 1988 C-Record with HF hubs and Deltas. A mint NOS groupset like that is still my Holy Grail of cycling. But I have only really come close to being able to afford nice stuff like that in the past several years. At the time it was out, I was a freshman in high school and there was no way I could have riden that group.

Hope that answered your question, and then some.

Russ

3.5mm allen wrenches are getting hard to find...
great post, russ!