AvantGarden

Hi,
I have a first generation Pinarello Dogma (2011) equipped with Campagnolo 11 speed chorus groupset.
Chainrings: 50/34
Cassette cogs : 11-28
I adore my bike and I don't even consider replacing it in the near future.
My age is 51 and I recently moved into a mountainous area with very steep slopes.
Some of them 15 to 18 degrees. I can climb up all of them but these 18 degrees ones cause my knees to hurt.
I feel I could use a 32 cog on my cassette.
What would be the cheapest way to do that?
I know there are Campagnolo 11 speeds cassettes and 12 speed cassettes of 11-32 sizes.


1. Which will fit my system ?
2. Do I need a longer rear derailleur ?
3. Do I need a longer chain (or a narrower chain in case of the 12 speed cassette) ?

To make things short, what is my best value for money option ?

vespasianus

Many of the Campag RD had max cog of 29T and a chain wrap of 33T, but not sure how much one could push that. You might need to get another derailleur as well as a cassette and chain. If you went full 12-speed, you would need new everything. New shifters, new derailleurs, etc.

AvantGarden

OK. No 12 speed cassettes than...
If I buy a "Campagnolo Centaur 11 Spd Road Bike Cassette 11-32" (at a nice 281 gr), will it fit my Chorus 11 speeds system from 2011 ?
If it does fit, I can check how the shifting goes and if it's bad, buy a longer rear derailleur...

Speaking of rear derailleur, "Campagnolo Potenza 11s medium cage rear derailleur" has "29-32 only" text engraved on it.
Would it fit my Chorus 11 speeds system from 2011 and work fine together with the new Campagnolo Centaur 11 Spd Road Bike Cassette 11-32 ?

vespasianus

That is the hard part. It might or it might not. If it does not, you could also just buy and use a Centaur RD as well. The official Campag stance is this will not work, but I have used a Centaur derailleur with a "record" level shifter and honestly, it worked 100% fine.

AvantGarden

I'll narrow down my question and I'll also call and check with Campagnolo support :
Since Potenza seems to be a higher grade (and not too expensive) group, will a Campagnolo Potenza 11 Speed Cassette + Campagnolo Potenza 11s medium cage rear derailleur fit Campagnolo Chorus 11 Speed system ?

vespasianus

According to Campagnolo, no. they are not compatible. However, many people - including me, have used them as such and it works perfectly fine.

I actually use a 11 speed 11-32 Shimano cassette and free-hub with a Centaur derailleur and H11 (record level) shifters. Works perfectly fine (well up to now at the 12K mile mark!).

gfk_velo

At Velotech Cycling Ltd, one of the two Campagnolo Service Centre in the UK, we have 3 Dogma 65.1s from 2010/11.
We havea 53, a 55 and a 57cm.

At various times we've test-assembled non-standard combinations to test them.

1st generation Chorus 11s doesn not allow 11-32 to work correctly on any of these three frames.

If you want it to work predictably and correctly, with currently-made components, you have two options.

To keep a full Chorus system, what you need is:

1.New chain (as you need a medium cage on the RD).
2. Chorus HO Medium cage RD
3. New RH lever body only, EC-RE300
We strongly advise Campagnolo inners and outers.

The HO medium cage RDs (2018) have a stiffer parallelogram and a re-designed upper pivot to cope with the strains a medium cage, cross-chained, on the largest sprocket.
This is different to the 2015 RDs which look outwardly similar - for good, reliable accurate function, the HO version of the RD is needed. These are currently available in the market.
You will need the new RH shifter body because the cable pull to derailleur movement ratio in post 2015 11s RDs is different to pre 2015.

There are some slight downsides, as the pre 2015 front derailleur wasn't designed for the chain to pass as "high" relative to the inner plate of the FD cage - it can rub when you are fully crossed. This is different to a fully in-spec assembly where normally all 11 sprockets are available from the big chainring without chain rub. Inner chainring function is usually fine.

We'd recommend a careful front mech set up and a chain catcher as the original, pre 2015 Chorus FDs were not designed to control the chain on a 16T "drop" at the front in combination with 11-32 at the rear.

We don't recommend that you just change the FD for a 2015 type because the LH shifter to suit it is different, with a different cable pull to FD movement ratio to the earlier type - you could change the LH shifter body as well, to compensate - but all of that adds costs for a relatively small functional gain.

The second option, is to use a Centuar based solution.

You cannot just fit a Centuar RD (as suggested elsewhere in the thread) as the cable pull ratio on Centuar 11s is only compatible with Centaur shifters. You can, of course, change the RH lever shifter body as well (as suggested for Chorus above - EC-CE600).

The downside with this is that you lose some function (Centaur 11 only has multiple shift to the bigger sprockets, it's one-sprocket-at-a-time towards the smaller sprockets and the aesthetics of the thumb lever are different.

As a third option, using (basically legacy) parts, you could also look for a Potenza medium cage RD and Potenza lever body (EC-PO400) but the RDs are no longer in production at the factory for normal sales (only for warranty) so there are afew in the market.

AvantGarden

WOW M gfk_velo... What an analysis !
I took my Dogma to the local Campagnolo importer in Tel Aviv yesterday.
We were surprised to find that while I have a Campagnolo Chorus 11 speed (circa 2011) system, the rear wheel core and the cassette were ... Shimano ! Sorry for providing wrong info.
The technician put the following parts:

- Shimano Ultegra 11 speed 11-32 cassette
- Shimano Ultegra 11 speed new (a bit longer) chain
- Medium size Chorus 11 speed rear derailleur cage
- A new Chorus 11 front derailleur (apparently the chain guide was broken)

The Dogma now shift perfectly as it never did. At least to my humble opinion.
The question gfk_velo, is whether it is now a setup that you predict to work reliably for the long term ?
I also wonder if the broken chain guide was a fatigue issue related to bad adjustment or a more severe issue of none matching parts working together ...

gfk_velo

Part of this is down to what you find to be an acceptable level of shifting and part of it is down to possible longer-term damage to components.

The older Chorus RDs from 2009-2015 (which it sounds as if you have) were not designed to mount a medium cage. In fact, it's not widely known that within the first 3 months or so of production, the specification was changed, anyway, to allow the use of a 29T biggest sprocket. Early examples were only capable of taking a 27T and a small modification was needed to those derailleurs to allow the use of a 29.

Yes, the medium cage for the later Chorus 11s RDs will "fit", technically - the assembly is the same on all versions, CH, RE and SR, pre and post 2015. The changes that were made on the HO version of the RD post 2018, when Campagnolo started to offer a medium cage version were:

1. The composite of the upper knuckle of the derailleur was changed to make it more resistant to twisting loads induced by a long cage, in a fully-crossed shift. You can see the difference if a pre-and a post 2018 Chorus RD are sat side by side.

Pre 2015 11s RDs all had alloy upper knuckles, not initially tested for these loads (the 11s Athena triple RDs did have medium and long cages but we never queried whether any changes were made to accommodate those new parts at the time Athena Triple was launched). The carbon parallelogram plate, though, has "ears" that fit over the knuckles - how resistant they'd be to twist loads I don't know. Again, not tested as far as the SCs were made aware.

2. Between pre 2015 and post 2015 rear parallelogram plates, changes were made to stiffen and lighten, to increase accuracy of shift. The plates were stiffened again when HO was introduced, which would suggest that the very earliest 11s RDs where probably not felt to be stiff enough to give good shifting with a medium cage if two steps of modification were made on the way to making HO ... I do know that the rear parallelogram plate was changed between Athena 11s (standard cage) and the Triple versions.

So, how much difference does all that make? It probably affects speed and accuracy of shift, certainly under load - but is it a deal-breaker? Maybe not. Wear and tear would probably have at least as much influence on shifting fluidity over time but of course, if you start from a better place, if degradation is linear, you should "end" at a better place - service life might be longer, because it will take longer before shift quality breaks down to the point where it becomes totally unacceptable.

The next factor is tracking angle. In an "old" RD pre 2015, the top jockey essentially follows, when viewed from the back, a near straight line across the width of the cassette. Because the parallelogram pivots are angled relative to the derailleur path, as the H screw setting is changed and so the upper body angle changes relative to the dropout, the angle of that line changes - broadly, the wider the range of the cassette, the "steeper" the angle of the line as the top jockey wheel is moved down and back by changing the relative tensions of the upper and lower pivot springs (that's what the H screw does). That means, in the middle of the cassette, where maximum accuracy is needed, the top jockey tends to be further away from the sprockets on a wide range cassette because the "cross-section" of the cassette gets gradually more concave as the ratios get wider (look at an 11-23 and then at an 11-32 sideways on, to see what I mean).

The 2015 RDs were designed to "follow" the shape of the cassette more accurately - the HOs used the same mechanism.

Why does this matter in the context of a pre 2015 RD?
The accuracy will degrade in the middle of the cassette with chain, sprocket and jockey-wheel wear (not noticeable, on say, a 12-25 but more so on a 12-29).
Add to that the fact that the mech is being forced further away from the wheel centre to accommodate the 32 but the angle of the line that the mech follows stays the same - so the top jockey is even further away mid cassette and further away on the small sprockets, so chain control is compromised again.

If you add that to the Shimano 11s cassette, starting on an 11T sprocket also being 0.3mm narrower than the corresponding Campagnolo cassette (at the 11-12-13T end, Campagnolo have slightly wider spacing, Shimano's is constant), you'll have the possibility - which we investigated trying various tricks to widen the range of the EPS RD, basically a 2011-geometry RD, on the teams - of the chain overshooting the top sprocket because it's not as well controlled as it should be, and jamming between frame and top sprocket.

Each of these things taken in isolation is pretty minimally important - add them all up and you might be generating a longer term problem, although I would say, a good care and maintenance regime will control most of that. As a rider, one gets used to slowly degrading quality of shift and it's only when everything is put back to "as new" that you realise how bad it had become (hence riders often saying to me after we've done a full service "it feels like a different bike") ... regular and careful servicing acts as a brake on the degradation.

Campagnolo, like Shimano and SRAM, when making recommendations, assume a certain level of mechanic skill in assembly and set up, they assume a certain level of maintenance (and make recommendations about service intervals based on that) and they control what they can control - hence advising against mixing and matching, because they are not in control of another manufacturer's standards or tolerances. They'd advise against what you have done not necessarily because of any safety issue - but because they can't guarantee the behaviour of something that they haven't tested in the lab / in the field, using parts over which they have no manufacturing control.

I doubt the breakage you had was directly because of an out of spec usage, btw - I've never seen it happen "quite" that way. More probably, it was an ageing effect.

Sorry, that's another really long and complicated answer and not an attempt to blind anyone with science - but in the increasingly complicated world of groupset specification & with increasing customer expectations, simple answers to apparently simple questions are getting harder and harder to come by!

AvantGarden

Thanks again, gfk_velo, for providing so much knowledge...
If at this point, I want to be more Catholic than the Pope, or more Jewish in my case ;-), if I replace my 2011 Chorus RD to a modern Chorus RD, I should not expect severe load and long term degradation of shift quality ? Would you recommend that ?

gfk_velo

Hi there

Yes, in that case, you'd be best going the route of HO medium cage RD, RD15-11CH2SP (CHORUS (HO) 11s rear der. - medium cage MY15-19) ... ignore the RD15 code, it's there to confirm retro-compatibility to 2015 RDs even though it's a 2018 item ... and a new RH lever body, EC-RE300 to suit. That way, you are safe from waking to find a horses head in your bed, the Spanish Inquisition at your door and / or longer term de-generation in shifting performance. I'll leave you to decide which is the more undesirable :-D

AvantGarden

LOL !!!!
OK, I just bought a RD titled as "Campagnolo Chorus HO 11 Speed Rear Derailleur Medium Cage". There was no catalogue or serial number. I guess this is the correct one, right ?

gfk_velo

Yes, that should be the kiddy.
Don't forget the RH lever body though, as otherwise, it won't "quite" index. The pre 2015 lever is close - but not right!

AvantGarden

Just to let you know, I took a second mortgage...
What RH lever body do I need ? What catalogue number ?
There are so many variations (several years, disk one, etc)....

gfk_velo

Haha, yes, tell me about it ... :-D

The lever body you need is EC-RE300.

It's the lever body ex rubber hood, clip, brake lever and pivot pin.
The "excluded"parts all transfer directly across from your existing lever.

When knocking the pivot pin out of the existing lever body (flat ended punch or 4mm dia rod needed, plus a light hammer) just be careful to
a) support the body of the shift lever as you do it and
b) the pin only goes in one direction, from the "inside" towards the "outside".
It just taps out, there's no locking screw etc.
It usually needs a fairly firm blow to shift the pin, they can be in there quite tight.

AvantGarden

"The lever body you need is EC-RE300."
This is for a non-disc type, right ?

gfk_velo

Yes, that's correct.
All the disc-brake type lever bodies have a "DB" in the code, even those that have only ever been DB, like Ekar for instance ...

AvantGarden

Hi gfk_velo,
What is the catalogue number for the Campagnolo Chorus 11 speed Right hand lever body which I currently have (2009-2014 I believe) ?

gfk_velo

It's EC-RE100. Same part for RE and CH.

It's an oddity of the numbering sequence, EC-RE200 is the 10s lever body complete (if that's what's perplexing you).

The reason is that the complete 10s body was introduced in 2010/11, prior to that, all the spares were available loose.
When Campagnolo made the decision to scale back on loose lever body spares, they made complete lever body codes and coded the current model (11s) ahead of the legacy model (10s).

From our factory ordering interface:





Hence, second gen CH / RE 11s bodies are EC-RE300.

SR / EPS don't not follow the same sequence because here was no SR or EPS 10s body.

TiHabanero

gfk_velo, you are a hero! Great information and thoroughly explained.

One thing to note when removing the pin, use a brass drift, not steel. It will produce a better result as it won't bounce on the pin head. I had to repair a Record shift body two years ago that a customer was unable to do himself. He was unable to remove the pin, so I showed him using a brass drift works best in this situation. Additionally, I drilled a hole in a piece of pine wood and positioned the pin over the hole before striking. This properly supported the shifter around the pin so that it would not break.

AKTed

This thread is very informative! I really appreciate gfk_velo’s detailed explanations. It confirms my personal experience with 2015 Chorus 11s shifters/derailleurs and Shimano cassettes.

In late 2015 I built up a bike with the then new Chorus 11s shifters, derailleurs, chain, and ran them with a Shimano 11-32 cassette. It shifted well for me, even with the short cage derailleur. Once Campy came out with the HO med cage derailleur I installed it with a Shimano 11-34 cassette and the shifting is excellent for me. I’m still riding it. I get some very slight noise in certain cogs which I attribute to the slight differences in the Shimano cassette, but really it’s hardly noticeable.

I fully understand why manufacturers cannot recommend configurations outside their stated specifications, but what is amazing to me is how well these function, even when pushing their limits, so to speak.

Ted