Swapping brands info for newbie!

chris_king

Hi all,

been out on my new Bianchi for around 50 miles now, and absolutely loving it. Rides beautifully, and am just amazed at the ease at which I can ride it, and the speeds I can achieve. Its better than I expected!

The thing i'm confused with is all the components available that I can upgrade with. I'm not jumping the gun and upgrading straight away, but it would be great to get a heads up of whats right and wrong. I've looked, but cant find too much info about what works with what etc. I'm bit of a newbie to cycling, and am amazed at the sheer number of parts out there.

I'm going to ask a few questions that hopefully can help me understand whats what:

I've seen Campagnolo wheels for sale on Wiggle, with the options of Campag or Shimano. Now i'm guessing that this refers to one rear hub being able to take a Shimano cassette, and the other Campag?

Say I got offered a Shimano 105 front derailleur at a bargain price. Could I use this with my Shimano 2300 gearchange, or would I need the associated gearchange too?

Can Shimano gearchangers operate Campag or Sram derailleurs, or does it have to be make for make?

I've currently got an 8sp rear cassette, which i'm assuming to be Shimano, athough the site I bought from isn't too clear. If I was to go to a 9 or 10sp, would I need a 9 or 10sp rear derailleur? The same goes for the front crank. I'm running a double front crank, if I wanted a triple, would I need to change the derailleur too?

I've got 2300 shifters, which at the moment are shifting 2 and 8 speeds front and rear. It seems the front shifter can shift 3 though. So if I went to a triple front crank, can I keep my shifter?

I've looked at Shimano 9 and 10sp cassettes. There seems to be many models, including Tiagra and Ultegra. Can I mix and match? Will my 2300 groupset be compatible with these, and do all Shimano cassettes fit all Shimano rear hubs?


Apolgies for the mass of questions, but think this may help me, and other newbies learn!

Cheers, Chris.

rake

you can mix shimano and sram cassettes. they use the same spacing. not strictly true for campy but some say its worked, but its not built to. cant use sram shifters with shimano derailers and vice versa because they have different cable pull ratios. 8 speed chain is wider outside than 9 and 10, so youd need a new chain for more gears. always keep shifters and derailers matched to the same brand, but the model levels are compatible.ie tiagra or whatever shimano will work with your shifters etc. fairly modern shimano freehubs
take 8,9 or 10 speed cassettes, some high end ones were 10 speed only because they were light weight and had to have taller splines to stop the cassette from digging into the soft material but you wont have one of those.

chris_king

Thanks Rake, hugely appreciated.

dmch2

If you look at page 26 of http://www.fullspeedahead.com/downloadfly.aspx?download=downloads/1_FSA+Dealer+Eng-Ita.pdf it has a comparison chart of the relative levels of the various manufacturer groupsets. Useful if you, like me, can't tell a SRAM Red from a Shimano Sora etc