Technical FAQ: Tons of Campagnolo questions

Dear Lennard, I have first-generation Campagnolo Record EPS on my bike. It has an external battery bolted under the water bottle on the down tube. Can I switch to the internal battery and still use my existing shifters and derailleurs?— George

Dear George, Yes, you can. You have Version 1, and Campagnolo has had the Version 2 (V2) internal-battery system out for a few years. I made this upgrade myself on my Campy EPS bike a couple of years ago, switching from the V1 external battery to the V2 internal battery. Now, however, V3 is available, or will be very soon, and you can upgrade to that one, which would be my recommendation.

To upgrade to V2, you have to drill a hole for the V2 charger port somewhere down near the bottom bracket. I drilled mine under the down tube (see photo). Drilling a hole in your frame will certainly void the warranty.

That’s not the only extra hassle, however, since, unlike a Shimano Di2 internal battery, the V2 battery does not fit in the seatpost. Rather, it mounts deep down in the seat tube (or, in some large-diameter monocoque carbon frames it can go inside the down tube) and affixes to the inside of the tube by means of double-threaded screws that hold the water bottle cage on. You need a special tool to reach the battery in there and hold it in place. It can be a bit of pain to get the charger port to make the bend from inside of the bottom bracket shell to pop out of the hole in the down tube.

If you upgrade to V3, however, you don’t need to drill a hole in the frame (because V3 charges at the EPS interface up at the stem, like Di2), and you can install the battery inside of a seatpost. This makes it much easier and won’t void any frame warranty. Full instructions for installing all EPS versions are in “Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance, 5th Edition.”

Furthermore, you can do a lot more with V3. You can get the My Campy app on iTunes or on the Android Play Store, and it allows you to very simply and easily change the functionality of your EPS shifters. For instance, you can impart shifting logic like SRAM eTap to them, or you can make all shift commands come from only one lever (great for various disabilities). Additionally, you can sync your EPS with a Garmin to display a lot of the features the app does, like what gear you are in both numerically and graphically.

What’s nice is that all of these upgrades do not make your existing derailleurs obsolete; everything works fine together no matter what the generation of battery and interface you have.― Lennard

Dear Lennard, I recently chose to replace the somewhat worn chainrings on my 2008 Chorus Carbon CT crank.

Wanting to see how they would perform, I chose a set of FSA rings in the same 34/50 gearing.

When the rings arrived I raced to install them and was very much surprised by what I found.

Not all five of the Campagnolo chainring bolts are on the 110mm circle. One of the bolts, the one hidden behind the crank, is on a roughly 112mm circle.

I verified this by …

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