tdh

The plan is as follows: Campagnolo 10speed crank 34/44 with a long cage rear derailleur with a wolf tooth and a 11-40 cassette; Jtek shift mate 1 if needed. To my knowledge max chain wrap of campa 10speed long cage rear derailleur is 39. So that should be ok. According to the wolf tooth website their rd extension works up to 40t for Shimano. They "recommend" max 36 for campa. Has anybody tried to combine a 40t cassette with Campagnolo via wolf tooth? Or even attempted a setup as described. Before I order the cassette I would be grateful if the tinkerer here could share their experiences...Thanks!

Yan 

I can't speak for the technical matters but you might want to reconsider using Campy on a touring bike simply for the reason that should you need replacement parts from random bike shops during the middle of a tour, it's a total pain in the ass with Campagnolo.

Andrew R Stewart 

I run Campy rear ders (with Shiftmates) on many of my bikes but on the tourer I use a Shimano. Because it has a greater capacity both on max cog and total chain wrapped. Andy

13ollocks

I agree - you're SOL if you need Campag parts "in the wild" - I'm a committed Campag fanboy of decades' standing, but if I were putting together a tourer, I would opt for Shimano - probably GRX 2x11. Shimano's the industry standard.
Closest I can address the OP's original question - I used a Wolftooth on a 10sp Campag Chorus medium-cage RD with a 12-30t cassette. The nominal sprocket capacity of the medium-cage is 29t, and while others have reported using larger sprockets, I found the 30t to run a bit rough. The Wolftooth was a seamless addition - possibly the shifting was a little slower, but not enough to matter. If you're using matched Campag 10sp shifters, RD and cassette, I can't imagine that you'll need the ShiftMate

veganbikes

Yan and I may not often agree but on this SPOT ON! Campagnolo make excellent high quality components specially designed for racing, they aren't interested in anything else so they make gruppos these days that are pretty much all road dedicated gruppos for racing purposes (aside from Ekar which is gravel). They have in distant past briefly dabbled in MTB stuff and way back in the day did some more touring oriented stuff but these days it is all about road and some gravel racing. Not only that they are as people have said hard to find in the wild. Some shops will have a couple things usually leftover from someone who backed out of the work every everything had come in or some overzealous buyer said yeah we should get two of these because we want to have stock.

Certainly there are shops that do sell Campy legitimately and stock it regularly but your average shop is unlikely to have it and while DHL or UPS or USPS or FedEx can ship stuff quickly I would rather go into the shop buy a Shimano or SRAM whatever and walk out and not have to wait or find a place to ship.

I love Campy though I think they make a good quality and good looking product and have for a long time but for touring Shimano or Shimano compatible is the way to go. It is rare to find a shop that doesn't have Shimano stuff or Shimano compatible stuff those shops are going to be few and far between. It may not be the cool choice or the different choice but it is a good choice for so many reasons. Not just ubiquity but also reliability and better range for touring and gravel. GRX gives me the ability to run a larger cassette or I could do something like Gevenalle shifters which are excellent for touring and run a mountain bike rear derailleur like an XT or SLX or Deore or something (and be able to Sweep the cassette, Johnny) I am using their stuff with some old Shimano Dura Ace 9 speed DT shifters and they are great, I do wish I had gone with the Microshift option only because they don't sit at a slightly weird angle due to the nature of the mounts and my shifter combo but they work great and nobody but me really knows.

Palmer

I would certainly consider touring with a Campy drivetrain. When I was younger, I toured from Pennsylvania to Florida on a Jamis Aurora with a Campy Racing T drivetrain. Three weeks, mostly camping, and no problems at all. I don't think that I even had a flat tire.
I wouldn't use Campy for a round-the-world trip, but I think that it would be fine for a short US tour. Ekar would be great on the GAP or C&O!
Anyway, I'm interested in the OP's question. I didn't know that you could put 34-44 chainrings on a Campy crank.

tdh

The tour will be in Europe...so I am not too concerned about spare parts; particularly as the cassette and the chain will be Shimano. I own almost nothing Shimano/Sram (no Shimano specific tools either) but I still have a ton of Campa 10speed stuff which I want to put to good use. I do, however, get on in age (wrong side of 50) and would really like to use a 40t or at least 36t cassette. Particularly as the tour will be rather long and I will have at least 35kg of luggage. Hence, the question. As regards the crank...It's a Campa 10speed CX with 110BCD. It comes (or rather came) with standard 36/46 chainrings. I have the shift mate because I intend to use a Shimano spaced Ali Express 11-40 cassette. Opinions differ as to whether this (Campa ergo+campa rd+Shimano Cassette) works without Shiftmate or not; we'll see. If the the rd with wolf tooth won't get up to 40t (according to their website if used with Shimano/Sram it goes up to 40t but they "recommend" only 36t for the Campa setup) I will have to buy a sub-compact crank. Which I am not too keen on because of vanity, male pride, ego etc. ;-)

Yan 

A sub compact crankset is not that small for touring. I use a mountain crankset on my touring bike and the large chainring is only 36t. Next month I'm changing to a 1x crankset and will drop the chainring to 34t. My wife's touring bike will be changed to a 1x crankset with a 30t chainring.

Atlas Shrugged

Considering the overall cost of the tour, an upgrade of your drivetrain would be a small percentage of that. Getting a dedicated wide-range drivetrain would be money well spent; even MicroShift would be a reasonable option compared to what you are planning. Carrying 35kg of kit with that gearing sounds very challenging, to say the least. If you are worried about your ego, wait until you need to start walking up some hills. Add to the gearing challenges your bodged together solutions are a recipe for problems.

squirtdad

35 Kg of luggage 77 lbs********** I think you really need to rethink that, add in the bike and you are at ~50kg/110 lbs to lift when

10 speed it older tech and using it because you have it is likely to be poor economics

at minimum you should go for sub compact or mountain crankset...or even a triple as IMHO you need to get smaller in front

Hondo6

OP: you indicated you were touring in "Europe", but didn't say where. The "where" may prove important.

I seem to remember @Bike Gremlin saying on his website that Campagnolo components/parts are uncommon in his nation (Serbia), and that Shimano components/parts are much more common. The same may be true in some other parts of Europe as well - particularly in the former Eastern Europe.

From what you've posted earlier, you apparently already have a Shimano-compatible freehub or rear wheel. You might be best off spending a bit and getting/installing a good used or new Shimano or Shimano-compatible drivetrain (crank/chain/FD/RD) and shifters that will handle the wide range cassette you plan to use. But it's your tour, and your legs - so it's your call.

Best of luck, and enjoy the tour.

Bike Gremlin

I don't know about other countries, but for Serbia (and most ex-Yugoslavia neighbouring countries - Montenegro, Bosnia), anything remotely "exotic" is hard to find.
That includes even the modern Shimano stuff (anything released during the last 5 years). SRAM and Campagnolo are even more tricky (in that order of "trickyness" ).

For example, at this time, I don't know any parts or service shop that has long shifter cables for tandems and touring bikes (RD).
I try to always keep a few in stock (Shimano, bought in Germany) in case some touring cyclists come and are in trouble (last time we used one of those was to help some touring cyclists get back on the road).
Yes, you can improvise, but it's nice if you have the right part at hand.

Friction shifters and rim brakes for the win!
Keep it simple.

Relja HoardingHamster Novović

P.S.
If it helps:
Bike repair shops in Serbia
(The few with my logo are good enough for me to recommend - I know how they work, know the owners etc. - it's not a paid advert, it's who I trust)

cpach

I'm not really a fan of pushing hanger extenders very far. While they reposition the derailleur, they don't fundamentally change it's geometry and make shifting worse on the small cogs.

It'd replace the crank with a super subcompact crankset (44/28 or so), possibly with a Shimano GRX front derailleur (smaller cage shape) as a starting point so as to need a less extreme cassette. Or just run a more conventional touring drivetrain.

13ollocks

I suspect that the recommendation of 36t for Campag vs 40t for Shimano has more to do with the max chain wrap capacity of Campag RDs vs Shimano. It's not in Wolftooth's best interest to recommend the use of a 40t cassette for Campag when the Campag RD won't handle the chain wrap inherent in such large sprockets. According to Branford bikes, 10sp Campag long-cage RDs have a nominal chain wrap capacity of 39 teeth, although in my experience these numbers are conservative and you can go a few teeth over. By that reckoning, your proposed 11-40 cassette and 36/46 crankset (chain wrap 39) should work fine. However, for loaded touring, whatever gear you think is low enough - go lower, because you'll ultimately need it. With your proposed setup, your lowest gear will be 0.9:1 (1:1 with the 36t cassette) - IMO that's nowhere near low enough for pulling you, your bike and ~80lb of stuff up hills (and if it can carry that load, you're probably not talking about a particularly light bike to start with). I'm not saying that you couldn't do it on any given day, but day after day? You need gearing that won't require you to bury yourself at any point, so you can keep doing it. You really need lower gearing.

Duragrouch

This. I was going to ask, why go so wide a range on the cassette when 2X cranks with 16 tooth drop are the norm now. Plus the wider the range on the crank, the fewer duplicate gears. Some also like to choose the chainrings so they are not perfect duplicates in the middle of the range but differ by half-steps (not to be confused with a half-step crank with rings about 5 teeth difference). The counter argument is a wider cassette means less need to shift in front, but I think that is a false economy because I like good chainlines for chain durability, especially when climbing, so I tend to use the inner ring for the lower cogs and the outer ring for the higher cogs.

tdh

Thanks, that helps…but leads to a follow up question: a 34/40 combo gives a 0.85 ratio whilst a traditional drivetrain with a sub compact 28/44 crank and the largest standard campa cassette 13-29 gives a ratio of 28/29=0.97. So even with a sub compact crank I would need at least a 36 large sprocket in order to get to a lower ratio: 28/36=0.78. on the other hand I read that the ratios do not give the full picture…a large crank with very large cassette is allegedly not the same as smaller crank with not quite as big cassette even so the gear ratios might be close…any experience with that?

Duragrouch

Only difference is perhaps durability; More teeth on everything wears better, but this is most critical on the smaller cogs.

What can be different, is that ratios don't tell the whole story; If you do gear calc to output gear inches, it's purely ratios, chainring/cog/tire-size. But if you output "gain ratio", that also takes into account the crank arm length, in terms of leverage and motion ratios.

13ollocks

For mere mortals like us, ratios are ratios, regardless of the chainring/sprocket combination that achieves them. That being said, a given gear using a large/large combination (eg, 50/25) will technically be more efficient than a small/small combination (eg, 34/17) because the milder chain wrap around the larger gears induces less frictional power loss. However, a straighter chain line (eg, 50/13) will be more efficient than a crossed chain (eg, 50/25) - all this to say, differences in power transmission efficiency as a result of what the chain is doing are the most marginal of marginal gains compared to available gears, and of academic importance to anyone but high-level competitors.
When you’re grinding up a hill, you’ll be praying for another, lower, gear - not a slightly more efficient drivetrain. Available (low) gears are king.

Duragrouch

Wiser words were never said.

tdh

thanks for all the input…in case anybody’s interested: after debating back and forth with myself and looking around on a few marketplaces I decided on a tune Bigfoot mtb crank with 94/58 bcd. Got it for a reasonable price. It’s squaretaper which should help in case I need to replace the bb. I’ll run it with 22/32/42 chainrings and a 11-30 cassette. Btw. The tour will cover IT/CH/D/DK/NO.

13ollocks

sounds like you could climb walls with that setup 👍. Have a great trip.