Good post,
I wanted a good Campy setup and it’s all 70’s to early 80’s - 12 speed. Simple and tough.
For shifters I have Suntour bar-ends — I really like them and this set was on an early Windsor frame (serial # 000309) that I rode from Portland, OR to the Oregon coast then to Bozeman (well aaaallllmost, a buddy saw me riding over the mountain pass between Bozeman and Livingston, stopped and brought me to a bar in Livingston where I had three beers and was a bit tipsy - long ride).
I could have the bike shed some weight but then it would not be authentic to me.
Sounds like you ride a lot...I used to but our home is at the top of a hill and I dislike ending a ride after a lot of effort...
Stay right-side up!
I'm exactly the same. If I go out my driveway and turn right, there's a 8% downgrade. If I turn left, there's a 2% downgrade.
Guess which side I come up when I'm returning home?
And I year ya with the bar-end shifters. I used to ride with a guy who rode a Colnago with vintage Super-Record and friction shifters.
This was some years into the Ergo era and one day I noticed he had a 10-speed cluster on the back. I asked him how he got shifters from the 5-speed era to work with a 10-sp cluster and he said, "Friction shifters don't know how many cogs the cluster has."
All this new-fangled modern hardware they're forcing on the riders -- electronic shifting, disc brakes on road bikes and what-not -- the manufacturers are charging YUGE mark-up but they're also scaring off young people who just want to ride for the sheer joy of it. Riding should be fun, first and foremost.