Shimano and Campag - can you mix them?

[Marcellus]

The chainset on my road bike are shimano but i also have a set of old wheels which are from an old bike which was Campag.

I'm thinking, to save my good wheels, of using my old wheels but obviously they're campag cogs, can i use them on the shimano bike?

[S10GTA]

You can, but there is a dark art to it.

[anonymous-user]

I may be confused but are you trying to run a campag casette on a bike with shimano shifters?

In theory you can as you can control the variables but in practice I think its nigh on impossible as the pull ratio is different between the two, so you would always be out of alignment or not getting all the gears as you have to sacrifice a gear to get the right pull ratio

The make of chainset is irrelevant as you can run any chainset you want with any set mech/cassette as the chainset is effectively a "dumb component" and doesnt directly interact with the mechs.

Someone has brought out a really cool cassette machined out of one single piece of alu which is a campag sprocket pattern but built with shimano freehub pattern, its something like £200 but means you can run campag drivetrain with shimano freehub wheels which is useful if you have two bikes, one running campag, one running shimano and want to swap the wheels over....

Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 20th February 09:50

[Vocal Minority]

Is it not like googling 'google', or dividing by zero?

[counterofbeans]

Vocal Minority said:

Is it not like googling 'google', or dividing by zero?

No. It isn't

OP afaik you have 3 options:-

1. fit a jtek shiftmate
2. depending on wheels you may be able to replace the campag freehub body with a shimano one, then fit a shimano cassette
3. you may be able to get a campag splined but shimano spaced cassette (I know ambrosio do them the other way round i.e. shimano splined but campag spaced)

That's all I know

CofB

[Marcellus]

Cheers guys, to better explain, although I don't think it makes any difference as I think you've answered my question.

But was I was wondering if the wheel where the cogs were campag could be used on the bike where the dérailleur and shifters are Shimano.

I guess I'll have to go with plan b which is finish the Campag bike off and ride a steel framed non-compact chainset, won't do my training any harm and then means when I get back on the full carbon shimano bike I should feel like flying!!

[gazza285]

I'm the other way round on one of my Vitus 979s, that has Campagnolo shifters and Shimano hubs/cassette. It's eight speed and indexes perfectly well.

Other numbers of sprockets may not work as well.