Paul Kemp asked about the parts in the early SR post:
According to Campy Cat. 17a, the upper rail clamps and the bolts should be unique on the S.R. post too (perhaps alloy and Ti?).
Paul,
Here's my best answer, others are more than welcome to add to it:
The SR post had revised upper clamps, bolts, barrel nuts, and lower cradles. The camfered barrel nuts and alloy lower cradles are easy to identify, due to obviously different shape and material, respectively. The upper clamps and the bolts are not as easy to identify. The clamps are just pared down a little; there's just less steel there. The bolts are a similar situation in that the material is still steel, but they are trimmed a bit (the heads are of lower profile). The confusion really mounts because sometime after the c 1973 intro of the SR post Campy eventually began to use all these parts on some or all of the Record posts. I don't know if this was an immediate thing, something that they transitioned to, or perhaps something that they only started to do after the intro of the later 1-bolt SR post c. 1978.
As an aside, the alloy cradles, camfered nuts, etc. are often attributed to the Record SL post that was introduced c 1971. The original SL used the same hardware as Record, but had thinner walls, a camfer at the top of the shaft and a boring through the pivot (all these features carried over to SR, if I'm not mistaken, plus the flutes were added). All the revised lightweight parts only came about later, when SR was introduced. Later Record SL posts apparently came with some or all of the lightweight parts that were introduced with the SR. The really confounding part is that none of the parts or packages are dated, so you could get an old Record (or later GS... but that's another matter) with all the "heavy" parts and a new Record SL with the light parts and make the reasonable conclusion that the "light" parts were SL-specific and date back to 1971. They are not and do not, as far as I can tell. They are an SR thing dating back to 1973 and they later found their way to the Record and Record SL models.
One reason that few people know much about the Record SL might be because it only appeared in the 1971 catalog 16 supplement. The next catalog (17) included SR, and the SL post was gone. Based on my experience, and some of the detail changes in the SL (such as the addition of a min insertion line and the use of the SR parts), Campy continued to make it available after removing it from the catalog. Also, the details of the SL post are hard to gather from the catalog because it does not include part numbers for the hardware, but only for the complete post.
Finally, a few of the earliest SR posts had black anodized lower cradles that are very rare. The early catalog depiction of the SL shows a graduated scale engraved on the post. They seem to be beyond rare, never actually made (some panto places did a similar treatment, however).
Okay, really for real my final comment. Alloy bolts, nuts and upper clamps for the 2-bolt Campy posts were made by aftermarket suppliers like OMAS. Some people have mistaken these parts as original equipment on certain Campy posts, leading to more confusion. Other than the post itself and the SR-style lower cradles, the Campy post parts are steel. FWIW, given that I've broken an alloy lower clamp, I would not take things to the next level by using the aftermarket alloy bolts, nuts, or upper clamps.
Tom Dalton Bethlehem, PA USA
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