robertmccormack

I'm interested in a Campagnolo Racing Triple 9 speed Rear Derailleur from 1995.

Can you tell me if my Campagnolo Ergopower Record Titanium 9-speed shifters from 1998 will work with this derailleur?

Right now I’m running a Shimano 7 speed cassette with these brifters and a Campy chorus short cage derailleur, which works fine. Do you think the Racing Triple 9 speed RD will work as well?

mpetry912 

yes, if properly adjusted, should work fine.

the mixed set up you currently have "should not work" but it clearly does.

you can also get the internals of the Campy brifters overhauled. The spring and the ratchet gear do wear out. Brianford bikes in Seattle can do this for you and they have all the parts.

/markp

robertmccormack

Thanks a lot, Mark! It should also work with an 8-speed cassette, right?

CliffordK

Campagnolo changed their derailleur pull ratio from 1.4 to 1.5 at some time during the 9-speed era.

One note I'm seeing indicates the change occurred around 2000.

Old (1.4 pull ratio)
New (1.5 pull ratio)
Your 1995/1998 components are likely from the same era and should work.

CliffordK

Not exactly.

Lots of good info here:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bicycl...ing_Dimensions

So, the 8 speed and early 9 speed had the same pull ratio (so shifters/derailleurs were compatible), but the cassettes had different sprocket pitches.

For Campagnolo, 8 speed sprocket pitch was 5mm, and for 9 speed, it was 4.55mm, so not optimal to mix. Controlled by cassette and shifters.

robertmccormack

Thanks, Clifford. I forgot to mention that the 8 speed cassette is Shimano. I looked at the wikibook but I'm not very technical. Is the Shi cassette likely to work?

CliffordK

The question that is hard to quantify is how much slop is in the system.

So, Campy 9 speed has a 4.55mm sprocket pitch.
A Shimano 8 speed has a 4.8mm sprocket pitch.

Over 7 spacers, that difference would amount to .25mm per sprocket, or 7x.25 = 1.75 mm. That is probably a bit much for a derailleur to take up.

However, if one sets the derailleur to the middle sprocket. Then each direction is off by about 0.9mm, and it may work.

There are changes in cable routing that might help.

If you look at the Shimano spacers, they are listed as 3mm for Shimano 8 speed. You need about 2.75mm spacers.

It might be possible to file or grind just a little off of each cassette spacer to improve the shifting, especially if they are plastic spacers.

robertmccormack

Thanks a lot for the clarification, Clifford.

I’m now thinking of going with a 9-speed Shimano Cassette.

The question is whether there’s still too much slop in the system.
Campy 9 speed has a 4.55mm sprocket pitch.
A Shimano 9 speed has a 4.35 mm sprocket pitch.
Over 8 spacers, that difference would amount to .20mm per sprocket, or 8 x .20 = 1.60 mm.

Do you think that’s also too much for a derailleur to take up?

Btw, I did some more research on bikeforums and found the following answer to the same question I’m asking about 9-speed. It’s from someone named RainmanP to a user named Velocipedio:

“I will relate again what was told to me. When I was considering changing to 9-sp Campy Ergo levers and ders I called Harris Cyclery to see if they had spacers to change the spacing of Shimano cassettes so I could use my Shimano-hubbed wheels. It turned out I was talking to Sheldon Brown himself. Sheldon assured me that Campy shifters and ders will work just fine with stock Shimano cassettes because the difference in spacing is something like 0.05 mm. No chatter or noise because the der is not perfectly aligned or anything. Just fine. Others here seem to take issue with this, but I will stick with Sheldon's opinion. Just to clarify, we are talking about using Campy Ergo and der with Shimano cassette on a Shimano freehub...”

It looks like Sheldon Brown (God rest his soul) may have made a mistake in the figures, but I would bet he was speaking from actual experience.

The thread can be found here:

https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...-cassette.html

mpetry912 

mix and match between shifters and cassettes is very much an experimental process

you can try it. It might work. might not. As you can see there are several degrees of freedom beyond "S" and "C"

really hard to make a deterministic call with the information provided.

/markp

Dave Mayer

Sigh... bicycle indexed shifting is based on simple mechanical principles. There are 3 parameters:

1. The shifter cable pull per click or gear
   
2. The mechanical actuation of the rear derailleur. NOT ALL DERAILLEURS ARE THE SAME.. Why should they be? For example: old Campy is 1.43:1. New Campy is 1.50:1. Shimano and SRAM are different again.
   
3. The cog spacing.

All 3 things have to match - or within an error of no more than 0.2mm per shift - at the cassette. Do your research and run the (simple) math. I have successfully matched up dozens of seemingly incompatible systems. IF THE MATH WORKS, THEN THE SHIFTING WILL WORK. Every time. Not point in wasting your time futzing around in the dark applying trial and error.

Shifting performance, even among some experienced cyclists, there seems to be some misconceptions here. Acceptably set up indexed shifting is perfect shifting. As in no under-shifting, over-shifting, ghost shifting, clattering, noise, being in-between gears etc. It is flawless and precise every time, with no hesitation. Even the oldest indexed systems (such as 8-speed Ergopower or 6-speed STI) can produce perfect shifting. 90% of the problems we see in our shop are worn-out cables, housing, chains and cogsets. Or simple adjustments in the cable tension. Fixing this results in perfect shifting.

BTW: blocking out the constant clattering coming from the back of your bike with iPods will not fix indexing issues.

So for example running old (1.43) Ergopower 9-speed shifters with a old (pre 2001) rear Campy derailleur over a 7-speed Shimano block will not result in acceptable shifting performance.

SJX426 

I transitioned my Pinarello 8 speed DA to Campagnolo over time. The issue for me was spending the big bucks for a hub.
Short term solution, several years, was the acquisition of Wheels Mfg. cassette spacers for the DA cassette. Worked like a charm with pointy hood Ergos.
DA/WM blcok on Flickr

Later upgraded to 9 speeds,2x9
Campagnolo first install on Flickr 2x9

then 3x9.
P1050217 on Flickr