9 speed all compatible?

briank

I've read that Campag 9 speed ergos and rear shifter wortk fine across a 9 speed shimano cassette. Some on here have said so and even our late Sheldon Brown admits that for reasons that are 'not quite clear" the combination works "pretty well". It shouldn't do really, since sprockets AND spacers are 0.2 mm different thickness - that's 3.4 mm across 9 sprockets and 8 spacers, or nearly 2mm out on either side if you zero the shifter perfectly on the fifth cog?
I've run Dura Ace since they invented STIs, but am now engaged in building up a new, pretty fancy Litespeed using a pair of Shimano carbon wheels and am toying with the notion of saving a couple of hundred grammes by using Record 9 speed bits.
Can anyone really tell me whether this mongrel mix would work - and work as well as Dura Ace?

mercurykev

9 speed ergos won't work with a 9 speed shimano set up but you can get it to work with 8 speed shimano. See this article for more info - http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3946

for 9 speed shimano you need 10 speed ergos - preferably pre-QS models.

However, this is only true if you want to run it without buying any extra kit. There is a wee piece of engineering called a Shiftmate, that does wonderful things. See http://jtekengineering.com/shiftmate.htm

HTH

Cheeky

I use veloce 9 speed ergos with a 9 speed shimano ultegra cassette with no problem at all, perfect shifting all across the range. The performance is actually better than I used to have with a Marchisio cassette which is supposed to offer a campag/shimano "conversion".
I use a SRAM chain just to screw up the mix entirely, not sure if this is crucial or not but I can guarantee it works fine.
Not sure of this helps or hinders!!!!!