Bottom line. My Campy Ergo shifters make my hands go numb. They’ve got a big lump where they transition to the bar. What am I doing wrong?
Details.
I moved from Shimano STI to Campy in the early 90’s. I love the way Campy separates braking from shifting, but I’ve always had problems getting comfortable on the grips. The big damned lump, where shifter meets bar, gets a lot of pressure from my hands, which then go numb. I’ve got to be doing something wrong. Maybe it’s the position or angle of the shifters, or maybe I’m just stubbornly hanging on to it wrong. I’ve been experimenting to beat this for years, but I’m out of ideas.
Altho one might be tempted to point to the cables, they are actually “beside” the bump, vs. “the cause” of the bump. If there was no bump, the cables would simply make the surface broader and I’d be good with that.
These are Chorus 11’s. 2016 maybe.
The first pic shows a Campy Ergo shifter with no bump. How can that be? Note how the Campy shifter offers a horiz surface for the hand, but the Shimano’s hand surface is at ~25deg. What are people doing such that they can get their hand comfortable on that horiz surface? My forearms aren’t horiz so I have to pivot my wrists when I’ve got the handgrips set up like the pic. How can awkwardly pivoting the wrists be the plan?
The second pic shows the plastic part of the shifter that is causing the trouble. Note red circle.
The third pic is my bike. Note the red line on the shifter’s shadow.
A lot of it is in how you do the tape. If you wrap a thick part of the tape over your highlighted area it exacerbates the bump. If you line it up right the tape smoothes the transition.
Often for shimano I’ll put an extra bit of tape in behind the hood body to fill in the gap. Paying attention to this area is important for every brand of shifter.
A lot of it is in how you do the tape. If you wrap a thick part of the tape over your highlighted area it exacerbates the bump. If you line it up right the tape smoothes the transition.
Often for shimano I’ll put an extra bit of tape in behind the hood body to fill in the gap. Paying attention to this area is important for every brand of shifter.
I hear you, but I’ve tried that. The lump is plastic. Putting an extra layer of wrap before it is easy, after it not so easy, and it looks terrible. I can’t get past the idea that Campy has this figured out and I’m just missing what they intended.
And what about the idea of how the Campy grip surface is horiz? How is everyone else grabbing that?
What you are describing (the horizontal, not the bump) is why I switched to Shimano from Campy. I had Record 8s and 9s back in the day, and switched to Dura Ace 9s because everything just fit the hands better. There’s no way to fix it, if you angle the levers to where the hoods are comfy, then the brakes are too far from the drops.
A lot of it is in how you do the tape. If you wrap a thick part of the tape over your highlighted area it exacerbates the bump. If you line it up right the tape smoothes the transition.
Often for shimano I’ll put an extra bit of tape in behind the hood body to fill in the gap. Paying attention to this area is important for every brand of shifter.
I hear you, but I’ve tried that. The lump is plastic. Putting an extra layer of wrap before it is easy, after it not so easy, and it looks terrible. I can’t get past the idea that Campy has this figured out and I’m just missing what they intended.
And what about the idea of how the Campy grip surface is horiz? How is everyone else grabbing that?
Luckily for me mine don’t seem to bother me. Those bars are off the bike now and there is no tape on them but I don’t remember it being an issue when they were on. I can’t say it was a great tape job that filled the gap so I guess I was just lucky. However, if it was bothering me enough, I’d take my Dremel tool, or even a file to them to smooth the bumps out myself. It looks like removing some of the material won’t leave it unnecessarily weak.
What you are describing (the horizontal, not the bump) is why I switched to Shimano from Campy. I had Record 8s and 9s back in the day, and switched to Dura Ace 9s because everything just fit the hands better. There’s no way to fix it, if you angle the levers to where the hoods are comfy, then the brakes are too far from the drops.
I don’t care about getting to the brakes from the drops. I’m old. I haven’t been on the drops in 20yrs. I rode today with the bar rotated up so the grips were at a decent angle. The lumps still irritated the heck out of me.
A lot of it is in how you do the tape. If you wrap a thick part of the tape over your highlighted area it exacerbates the bump. If you line it up right the tape smoothes the transition.
Often for shimano I’ll put an extra bit of tape in behind the hood body to fill in the gap. Paying attention to this area is important for every brand of shifter.
I hear you, but I’ve tried that. The lump is plastic. Putting an extra layer of wrap before it is easy, after it not so easy, and it looks terrible. I can’t get past the idea that Campy has this figured out and I’m just missing what they intended.
And what about the idea of how the Campy grip surface is horiz? How is everyone else grabbing that?
Luckily for me mine don’t seem to bother me. Those bars are off the bike now and there is no tape on them but I don’t remember it being an issue when they were on. I can’t say it was a great tape job that filled the gap so I guess I was just lucky. However, if it was bothering me enough, I’d take my Dremel tool, or even a file to them to smooth the bumps out myself. It looks like removing some of the material won’t leave it unnecessarily weak.
Hmm. That dremel idea is interesting. But I’m still thinking that I’m missing something. Is it possible that Campy users don’t grab the flat part at all? Like maybe they actually grab the very end of the brake housings that stick up? Riding with my hands, bearing a fair amount of weight, on a horiz surface just makes no sense to me. How do people do that without cocking their wrist at a weird angle?
Could it be that your hands are larger or smaller than average? FWIW, in golf I wear a size 25 glove, which I think is on the small size. Another thing is that I think my controls were just a tad low which may have put more of my weight on the webs between my thumbs and index fingers instead of on the pads.
I just pulled my controls off because I will be buying a new bar soon, but when I take a closer look at the plastic underneath the rubber it seems plenty beefy enough to grind the bump off into a smoother transition.
Could it be that your hands are larger or smaller than average? FWIW, in golf I wear a size 25 glove, which I think is on the small size. Another thing is that I think my controls were just a tad low which may have put more of my weight on the webs between my thumbs and index fingers instead of on the pads.
I just pulled my controls off because I will be buying a new bar soon, but when I take a closer look at the plastic underneath the rubber it seems plenty beefy enough to grind the bump off into a smoother transition.
Only thing larger than average on me is my ego. I was 6’ tall when I was younger. I used to be able to do “low,” but never long and low. I have a short torso.
The bike is a classic 25yr old Colnago BiTitan that I’m very fond of. I feel very obligated to remain an Italian purist and stick with Campy. But I’ve put up with this for decades. Time to figure it out.
Could it be that your hands are larger or smaller than average? FWIW, in golf I wear a size 25 glove, which I think is on the small size. Another thing is that I think my controls were just a tad low which may have put more of my weight on the webs between my thumbs and index fingers instead of on the pads.
I just pulled my controls off because I will be buying a new bar soon, but when I take a closer look at the plastic underneath the rubber it seems plenty beefy enough to grind the bump off into a smoother transition.
Only thing larger than average on me is my ego. I was 6’ tall when I was younger. I used to be able to do “low,” but never long and low. I have a short torso.
The bike is a classic 25yr old Colnago BiTitan that I’m very fond of. I feel very obligated to remain an Italian purist and stick with Campy. But I’ve put up with this for decades. Time to figure it out.
I think my Chorus is the same model as yours. “A”. I’ll be keeping Campy on that bike as well, and those controls should be fine to grind. Give it a go braddah. It’s beautiful but not a trailer queen
