P!N20

I recently swapped some parts for a Campy 8 speed wheelset - Veloce hubs and Mavic Open Pro rims. I know they're Veloce hubs because Tullio wrote it on them:



First question; does anyone know what year these hubs surfaced? The 1st gen Veloce appeared in 1993, but they didn't have 'Veloce' on the hub body. 9 speed came along in '97, so I'm guessing between '94 and '96.

Anyway, setting about giving them a service, I was surprised to find the cassette spline was alloy with one of the spline ridges notched at 1 o'clock:



So I jumped onto Brandford Bike's Cassettes And Cogs page and found it was designed for 8 speed titanium cassettes, but it is still Exa-Drive, so regular 8 speed cassettes seem to fit and work.

I removed the 12-23 cassette it came with and put on a 13-26, but I was surprised that the lockring didn't fit on the alloy spline. Where the normal Exa-Drive locknut is 27mm diameter thread, the locknut for the alloy spline is 26mm.

But I'm sort of scratching my head as to how an alloy spline came to be on a Veloce hub. The Record 8 speed titanium hubs came with alloy splines, but we're a few rungs down from Record. Could someone have put a Record spline on a Veloce hub body? There is some evidence on the internet that there was an alloy splined Veloce hub, but it certainly doesn't appear to be common.

They roll wheel and I reckon they look pretty good on my Kypo (once I get some new rubber on them):

martl

It is/was a common upgrade to put this kind of alloy deep-grove freewheel body on 8spd Campy hubs, because they not only take on Ti cogs, which were super expensive, but also allow the transition to 9/10 speed. It didnt work for all hubs because of the axle diameter (?)and i'm surprised a veloce can do the trick!

P!N20

Thanks martl

Can the 9/10/11 speed sprockets slide straight on or is there some modification required?

The Branford Bike page suggests they need to be notched: https://branfordbike.com/new-page-1

pash

1998/1999/2000/2001 Veloce had the 26mm lockring IIRC

P!N20

Which would be 9/10 speed, right? But it came to me as 8 speed. Could you slide an 8 speed cassette onto a 9 speed spline?

P!N20

Bit of an update. Managed to find a reasonably priced Campagnolo 10 speed cassette to check my theory that it would fit on my Veloce hub.

Veloce hub with 8 speed cassette:



Veloce hub with 10 speed cassettte:





It works! So I could potentially have anywhere from 8-11 speeds given the corresponding shifters and chain. Now I'm wondering if the spline could be transplanted onto any Campy 8 speed hub.

This could be the first step in converting some 10 speed bar end shifters to down tube shifters, or getting some 8 speed 'dual mode' shifters that could deal with any number of sprockets on the back in friction mode with a change of wheel and chain.