# Centaur 10 Shifting Issues Resolved - Finally



## Bicycle019

So myself and a few other people have mentioned that the rear shifting on the latest version of Centaur 10 speed has been less than stellar. A very soft lever click for upshifts coupled with generally poor shift quality have been the main complaints. Some users report no problems, while others have tried all sorts of stuff from changing cables and housing to drilling out the small o-ring that seals the cable exit from the shift body, usually to no avail.

After 2300 miles of using Centaur 10 I'd been severely underwhelmed. My shifting would range from acceptable to downright crappy. I'd been very diligent keeping the cables and housing clean and lubed, had replaced the housing and cable a few times, each time to some slight improvement but still the action was nothing to write home about. 

I recently have built and worked on several bikes equipped Dura-Ace 7900 and new Ultegra 6700 a few times. Both are nice, but the lever hood shapes turn me off compared to the excellent job Campy has done with their latest offering. Same with SRAM's hoods. If only the rear shift quality could match the S guys...

It's Spring time, so that means bike overhaul time after a winter of riding wet/sandy roads. I had a two pronged attack plan. I had read about the EC-CE110 upgrade kit to help with the soft shift lever click, so I ordered one of those from QBP (expect to pay around $40 from your dealer) along with a Gore Ride On Professional derail cable system kit to hopefully improve the shift action. I'd tried the Campy cables and housing, and had replaced that a few times over with Shimano SP-41 and Jagwire Campy specific cables. New cables/housing would help the shifting out for a while, but it would always degrade over time and become maddeningly inconsistent. I figured I'd try the Gore and see if it would help bring some long term consistency.

Here is the contents of the EC-CE110 kit. It's basically everything aft of the fiber washer.










I removed the shifter from the bar and took a good look at it before I started pulling it apart and noticed something interesting. I had pulled the shifter apart before when newer to investigate the poor shifting and nothing jumped out at me then, but with 2300 miles of use things were different. There seemed to be a wear mark in the shifter body I hadn't seen before, around where the head of the cable moves when going through the gear range. See the light grey line right below the creme colored cable spool. 










I played around with the cable and ran the shifter through it's range and noticed that the head of the cable doesn't like to sit in the spool very well. In fact, the head of the cable can come out of the spool very easily, and with the very tight clearances it would drag on the shifter body. This picture illustrates what happens.










All it would take is a little bit of cable friction somewhere in the system to "leave the cable behind" in relation to the position of the spool. It seems that the cable is most likely to have this happen when in the gears 3-5, which is where almost all of my shift problems existed. The body clearances better, and the wrap of the cable to the spool is better in gear positions 6-10. Same goes for position 1 and 2, where the cable is at it's straightest. 

Here are a few more pictures. The first with the cable seated and the 2nd with the cable just slightly out of the spool.


















I pulled apart the shifter and started comparing parts. The EC-CE110 kit comes with a new cable spool, and it was very clear that the new spool had a much deeper recess to hold the entire cable end, compared to the original one that only made contact with only a third of the cable head at best on the outside. Here they are side by side.


















With the shifter parts removed it was very clear where the friction I'd been feeling had been emanating. See that grey line? Not good.










I installed the new disk and the rest of the parts. There is a video on Youtube that shows you what to do if you're not familiar with the procedure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0HuogGeuc 

Here are the disks, with the new one on the left and the old one on the right.










All back together with the new parts it was clear that the cable head was no longer going to rub anything it wasn't supposed to. It's now fully enclosed by the new spool.


















All back together, I was shocked at how much better the shifting was. Not only were the shift clicks now more pronounced, but every gear shift was spot on! Not once since I've had this group installed had it shifted this cleanly. No doubt the cable head rub within the shifter body was the main culprit. This solves the question as to why shift quality would degrade so fast once the cables had even a slight amount of wear, or the bike was ridden in poor weather conditions. It would only take a little bit of friction to pop the cable head out of the spool and that's when things would go to pot. It's also why the problem was so intermittent; some times the cable would stay seated and everything would work, and sometimes it would pop out and shifting would suffer. Also solved is why people with the earlier rear derail's that had the lower tension parallelogram spring also would shift poorly - they didn't have enough force to overcome cable drag through the system to keep the cable end seated in the spool. 

I bet Campy made a running change to the shifters to the new spool, which is why some people have not experienced this issue at all, and think that the rest of us with earlier production shifters who do have the problem are crazy.

I now have about 100 miles on the bike since the fix was installed, and everything has been perfect. THIS is how the bike should have shifted from the get go. Light action, easy shifts that are totally consistent. I know I do have the Gore cable system installed as well, but I'm confident that with the full EC-CE110 kit installed and any brand of high quality cables and housing (stock Campy, SP-41) installed things would be better. I'm very excited that the performance of my Campy Centaur shifters match their excellent ergonomics. 

Hope this info helps some people out, and also quiets any of the nay-sayers who believe that the issue was non-existent.


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## ericjacobsen3

Thank you Bicycle019, I suspected this on my Veloce levers but I only had the lightest of rub marks and had a while ago superglued my cable head to my spool. I also checked for interference of the cable head on body and generally found no rub but I may not have had the cable under tension.

So there is some chance I had the same problem (shifters are decommissioned now). My theory in your case at least is that the bushing can wear, causing post slop of the bushing that lets the cable head contact the shifter body.

One note: Campy I learned has two different cable head end lenghts. I had two packages and as I recall, the Ultrashift head was longer than the old Ergopower head (strange if the new levers have the tighter clearance).

Maybe I will spring for the new click kit but my 10 hours engineering root cause labor budget and patience are exhausted. Hate to be a sucker again on this one.

Thank you for taking the time to share with the group your findings!


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## bikerjulio

*My 2 cents worth*

I don't think this was my problem, although I wish I'd seen this before rebuilding mine. Mine shifted OK but with a complete lack of feel with the downshift lever. When I took mine apart this is what I found:










When I reassembled with the ball in place, there was at least a little click.

When the new kit arrived - guess what, a little ball was already out of its place!










Anyway, all together now & much improved, tho still not as firm as previous generation shifters.


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## C-40

*thoughts...*

The cable head or cable spool dragging on the ergo body has been mentioned before and the solution is to either grind the cable head a bit or the cable spool, as required. My guess is the real problem lies in the molding of the ergo body being a bit out out line with the main pivot shaft. If there is ample material on the ergo body, it could easily be ground to create some clearance. 

I've bought four pairs of the new levers and not had this problem, so I've been lucky.

The clicks with the new kit should be just like 11 speed, not like the older shifters. Campy really goofed though, when they failed to make the 10 speed index disc with the same detents as the 11 speed model. 

The old shift mechanism is dead and users should not expect an entirely new mechanism to feel just like the old one. It is interesting that the thumb button feel is about the same, but the finger lever clicks are lighter. I think the new clicks are just right - not too heavy, but enough to let you know that a shift was made.


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## nenad

First of all, thank you for a great article on what would most probably be at least half of the reported issues on why those shifters didn't shift well.

As is so often a case in consumer goods, it often pays off to wait before buying latest and greatest. Let someone else discover the errors, and give the company a chance to fix them.


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## ericjacobsen3

Bicycle019,
You mention you are using Gore cables now. In your picture you show a Campy end. Did you switch after taking the pictures?

I bought a set of Gore cables myself. Both cables are long enough for the rear so I did not use for the front and put on the rear of two bikes; of course the rear is most important.

I bought my Gore cables about 18 months ago. At that time at least they did not have any small diameter housing to fit in the Ultrashift levers. I used the gore cable and sheath starting only at the down tube cable stop, running to the derailleur. This meant there was no sheath up at the levers. Unfortunately, the goretex covering wants to wear fairly quickly on the yellow plastic cable guide without the sheath. When this happens it is all downhill. The gore cables basically gave a couple months more marginal function from my Veloce Ultrashift levers. I then reverted to campy cables and issues grew further. I think the Gore cables just left a bit more cable tension left to pull the spool inside the housing.

Gore cables are nice. I hope they continue to work well for you.


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## Bicycle019

The cable end in the picture is a Campy specific cable from Jagwire. Same 4mm head as the stock Campy ones.

The Gore cable set I currently have on the bike is their Professional model. http://www.rideoncables.com/en_us/products/profsystem.html 

This system is sealed on the run down from the downtube cable stop to the rear derail. This is the revised version that omits the coating on the first 100mm or so of the cable head end so as not to wear off and gum up the shifters. This thread has some more info on the set: http://forums.roadbikereview.com/showthread.php?t=203380 I'm normally a strong advocate for traditional cable systems, as you can replace them several times over for the price of one Gore setup, but the shifting on this bike was so poor I went nuclear, so to speak. 

So far with a few more rides since my initial post everything has been great. The shifting has been very accurate, and the shifter feels like it should have from the factory.


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## campagnoloneutron

*...flexibility 11speed-10speed-11speed*

Thanks for taking the time to post the great info and the excellent photos.

I read this with interest for a couple of reasons. One part that comes in the kit, the improved cable spool component (EC-SR060) is possibly the resolution for some people with the "lazy shifting issues" that occurred with various models of the early production runs on the newest generation of Campagnolo Ergo shifters. The article also provides explanation why some of the shifters worked well once "broken in" after 1000km or so... which should not be necessary with this product.

As I understand it, a further benefit of this full part kit ( EC-CE110) would be to also make it possible for someone to convert a new SR-RE-CH ergo 11 speed shifter to 10 speed. I think this should be possible ...anyone tried? ...and why do this? ...to use the new excellent lever shape while using up existing 10 speed Record parts for instance...the new design ratchet in the kit gives the more definitive shifting feel that was lacking in the early 10 speed versions of the new lever design. Then later on it would be possible to rebuild the ergo lever back to 11 speed with the original parts and utilize it with 11 speed components. I like the idea of that kind of flexibility and it is consistent with the history of Campagnolo, components and parts that can be rebuilt, repaired and upgraded. 

I already have a couple of full SR 11 speed grouppos that are excellent and shift absolutely perfectly on the bikes I have built up but I also have lot of Record 10 speed components just sitting in the parts drawer... maybe I will use them with this sort of combo project and run something unusual such as converted SR ergolevers as part of a 10 speed RE setup... have to see how much time and inclination I have available.


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## C-40

*info...*

The kits that replace all of the parts in the back half of the shifter are not all those required to convert a shifter from 10 to 11 or from 11 to 10. You also need the proper front rachet and that part is no longer sold separately.

The only way to do this properly is to buy the major assembly that includes all of the parts except the brake lever, band clamp and brake hood.

I must say that I have never compared a 2007-2008 front rachet to the ultrashift model to see if they are truly different.

I've converted Centaur 10 shifter to 11 speed, but I got all of the parts from a wrecked damaged Record 11 shifter (broken ergo body - not sold separately either).


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## joelankeny

Thanks so much for this great thread. Well written and the pictures were great. My Veloce US levers were giving me the same problem. It started out only in a couple of gears, but recently got really bad. After looking at the cable head as it moved on the spool, you could clearly see it getting hung up on the shifter body since the RD couldn't overcome it. What took spending 6 hours trying to find, took me only 10 seconds to find after reading your post! 

I'm just going to live with the shifting as is for a while. I put on brand spankin' new bar tape, only to have the problem popup about a month later. I'm planning on buying the kit now and just holding on to it until I swap bar tape.

Best!
Joel


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## martinrjensen

*removing bar tape*

FYI I have removed, and reinstalled all types of bar tape from leather to cork a number of times, going for one bike to another, back to the original with no problem. You should be able to remove it, take off the levers to work on them and reinstall and re-wrap with the same bar tape with no problems


joelankeny said:


> snipped
> I'm just going to live with the shifting as is for a while. I put on brand spankin' new bar tape, only to have the problem popup about a month later. I'm planning on buying the kit now and just holding on to it until I swap bar tape.
> 
> Best!
> Joel


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## joelankeny

martinrjensen said:


> FYI I have removed, and reinstalled all types of bar tape from leather to cork a number of times, going for one bike to another, back to the original with no problem. You should be able to remove it, take off the levers to work on them and reinstall and re-wrap with the same bar tape with no problems


I tried that in the past with so so results and have never had to do it again. I'll give it ago when I get the kit. Thanks for the info.


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