Re: [CR]Soliciting Zeus Comments

Well, having always been a contrarian, I've never really had many all-Campy bikes, since that was what "everyone" had in the 70's. Always preferred French stuff or Zeus, just to be different. I've always considered Zeus as good as Campy and a little more innovative in design, although maybe they went a little too far with the drilling and slotting of the 2000 stuff in the late 70's/early 80's. I have 5 all-Zeus or nearly all-Zeus bikes: An Alan Competition, an Alan Super Record, an Austro-Daimler Superleicht, a Romic track bike, and a late 60's/early 70's Zeus bike. Except for the Zeus bike, I could have built any of these with Campy, but didn't. In may opinion, Zeus Criterium was every bit as good as Campy NR, Zeus 2000 as good or better than Campy SR, and Zeus New Racer as good as Campy Nuovo Grand Sport. In many ways, the designs were very similar, causing some to regard Zeus as Campy clones, which I consider untrue. Two significant differences were that Zeus, unlike Campy, made CP brakes, several different models, in fact; and Zeus used a much smaller bolt circle, 120mm, on the 2000/Criterium/New Racer. This allowed a 36T small chainring, giving much better choice of gears. However, I always wished they had gone 2mm larger to 122mm for campatibility with Stronglight, which would have made replacement chainrings a whole lot easier to find. As it is, the Zeus chainrings aren't interchangeable with anything I know of.

Regards,

Jerry Moos
Houston, TX