Campagnolo 10 / 11 speed Compatability

[alistaird]

Sorry to piggy back on another OPs topic but I've similar questions. I'm building up a Colnago E1 from 2005 and want to put Campy Record Titanium 10 Speed on it (pre Ultra Torque.)

1. I'm struggling to find a good condition FD so wondered if I could use a more modern 11 speed FD without problems?
2. Do I have to worry about Shifter compatibility or will any 10S Record shifters work?
3 Would a Triple FD work with a Compact Chainset?

I may have some more

Thanks for your help.

A

All 10-speed is compatible.

So just get a current Veloce FD.

Thank you for the info. It will help me with options.

A

[graeme_f_k]

Sorry to piggy back on another OPs topic but I've similar questions. I'm building up a Colnago E1 from 2005 and want to put Campy Record Titanium 10 Speed on it (pre Ultra Torque.)

1. I'm struggling to find a good condition FD so wondered if I could use a more modern 11 speed FD without problems?
2. Do I have to worry about Shifter compatibility or will any 10S Record shifters work?
3 Would a Triple FD work with a Compact Chainset?

I may have some more

Thanks for your help.

A

All 10-speed is compatible.

So just get a current Veloce FD.

Thank you for the info. It will help me with options.

A

Sorry BikeJulio, your statement isn't strictly true.
You get some variation in the function and the predictability as well as in component life.

You can get most 10s to work with most other 10s, but "working" is a pretty flexible term - depends what the expectation is.

The current FD should set up OK (definitely better that trying to bodge it will the 11s) but to get anything close to "to spec" function, alistaird will need to be careful with cable tension as the actuation ratio is different in PowerShift / UltraShift 10s from QS which preceded it.

We'd also definitely advise against Escape / PowerShift with Chorus or Record 10s, or with Centaur / Veloce / Mirage pre 2006, or with Xenon pre 2002 RDs - all of those units had the ~1.2kg return spring which will give quite definitely reduced service life in the levers. Escape and Powershift have a ~900g return spring.

Conversely, all of those RDs will work far better with the 10s UltraShift levers made in 2009 & 2010.

If you use one of the low return spring tension RDs with a non-Escape / PowerShift lever, you'll either find that instead of having a half-turn of tolerance on the adjuster each side of the "sweet spot" for cable tension, it's more like a quarter turn and as soon as you get significant wear and tear in the system / dirt in the cable system etc., you'll have to tweak the adjustment, or if it's an UltraShift unit, you may find you can't get it dialled in at all - Campagnolo made a special run of Veloce and Centaur 10s RDs with the same return spring as Record and Chorus 10s in 2009 & 2010 to work with the UltraShift levers, after initially making a mistake and marketing UltraShift 10s with low return spring tension RDs ...

As a point of info, that's also the reason for advising that Athena 11s isn't intermixed with Chorus and upwards shift levers, and likewise why Potenza isn't advised with Rev11+ Chorus and upwards levers - and that Rev11+ Rds are not used with Potenza levers.

[alistaird]

Sorry to piggy back on another OPs topic but I've similar questions. I'm building up a Colnago E1 from 2005 and want to put Campy Record Titanium 10 Speed on it (pre Ultra Torque.)

1. I'm struggling to find a good condition FD so wondered if I could use a more modern 11 speed FD without problems?
2. Do I have to worry about Shifter compatibility or will any 10S Record shifters work?
3 Would a Triple FD work with a Compact Chainset?

I may have some more

Thanks for your help.

A

All 10-speed is compatible.

So just get a current Veloce FD.

Thank you for the info. It will help me with options.

A

Sorry BikeJulio, your statement isn't strictly true.
You get some variation in the function and the predictability as well as in component life.

You can get most 10s to work with most other 10s, but "working" is a pretty flexible term - depends what the expectation is.

The current FD should set up OK (definitely better that trying to bodge it will the 11s) but to get anything close to "to spec" function, alistaird will need to be careful with cable tension as the actuation ratio is different in PowerShift / UltraShift 10s from QS which preceded it.

We'd also definitely advise against Escape / PowerShift with Chorus or Record 10s, or with Centaur / Veloce / Mirage pre 2006, or with Xenon pre 2002 RDs - all of those units had the ~1.2kg return spring which will give quite definitely reduced service life in the levers. Escape and Powershift have a ~900g return spring.

Conversely, all of those RDs will work far better with the 10s UltraShift levers made in 2009 & 2010.

If you use one of the low return spring tension RDs with a non-Escape / PowerShift lever, you'll either find that instead of having a half-turn of tolerance on the adjuster each side of the "sweet spot" for cable tension, it's more like a quarter turn and as soon as you get significant wear and tear in the system / dirt in the cable system etc., you'll have to tweak the adjustment, or if it's an UltraShift unit, you may find you can't get it dialled in at all - Campagnolo made a special run of Veloce and Centaur 10s RDs with the same return spring as Record and Chorus 10s in 2009 & 2010 to work with the UltraShift levers, after initially making a mistake and marketing UltraShift 10s with low return spring tension RDs ...

As a point of info, that's also the reason for advising that Athena 11s isn't intermixed with Chorus and upwards shift levers, and likewise why Potenza isn't advised with Rev11+ Chorus and upwards levers - and that Rev11+ Rds are not used with Potenza levers.

Wow I'm always impressed with the information on this forum. I need to read through the above in depth again but would I be right in thinking that if I stick to Record 10S I should be ok irrespective of year of manufacture? (I'm new to Campy being a long time ShimaNO user.) I guess I just need to be careful with the early 10S FDs to make sure I get a CT one if I go Compact with the chainset?

Thanks again for all the great information.

A

[bikerjulio]

Obviously I'm not going to argue with the expert, and respect the fact that he has to abide by the party line.

I have about 10 bikes to hand with Campy 10 and 11 speed systems spanning the whole era since 2000.

It looks to me that the one FD I have that has a different ratio is probably a leftover from the horrible 2007 Centaur group I had, the first year of "quickshift". And even that is working fine (for me) with a set of older Chorus 10-speed shifters. Graeme can correct me, but it looks to me like Campy experimented with a lower ratio (longer arm), FD for 2007-8 and then went back to the old geometry.

Apart from this anomaly, the current Veloce FD appears to have the same geometry as those in the 2000-2006 era, and the same as more recent ones in the 2009-2014 era. Admittedly, since I live in the flatlands, I don't do that much front shifting, so it's not such a big deal for me, but I have yet to find a combination of shifters and FD (excluding the post 2014 design that I don't have), that hasn't worked acceptably for me.

[graeme_f_k]

For info - QS was a technology that was applied across the 10s and indeed the remnants of the 9s range - in fact Campagnoolo had been gradually lengthening the actuator arm on FDs since the 1980s.
2008 was the end of the development road for 10s, as 11s was introduced in MY2009 and no material changes were made to the geometry of the 10s derailleurs after that - just in spring ratios and aesthetic.

There was a bit of a "blip" in 2009 when UltraShift was introduced - a washer (FD-CE011) was made so that QS FDs would pull correctly with US levers (US FDs have a still longer actuation arm), and an error was made in rear derailleur spring rates - Campagnolo, later in 2009, made special versions of the Veloce and Centaur RDs to work with US, with heavier spring rates, the same as used in Record and Chorus 10s.

With the introduction of PowerShift in 2011/12 at the Veloce and Centaur level, the RDs were also re-designed and reverted back to the lower spring rates as the internals of PS were basically the same as the internals of Escape. The lower spring rate gives a lighter action than the higher on downshift but requires that the levers don't use the RD return spring in any way as a driver for correct lever function (as is the case in US). Higher spring rates lead to premature wear in the Escape and PS type levers - they still work, they just have a shorter service life.