Swapping among Campy wheels

[wintershade]

Hi all --

I have a few questions about how best to live with multiple sets of Campagnolo wheels. Mainly, I'd like to avoid having to constantly reindex deraileur and swap pads when I switch among my Boras (fair weather climbing), Shamal Mille (all weather climbing), and Zondas (rain/beater/commuting).

1) Can I use my blue Campy pads from Shamal Mille with regular Zondas? If not, I'm inclinded to sell them for Shamal Ultras. The Milles look better and have marginally better breaking, but too many sets of pads.....
2) Have any of your found hub spacing to vary between these three wheels. I find my Bora and Shamals to require at most a 1/4 turn when switching between wheels, but my Zondas require a bunch of adjustment to even the high/low limit screws.

I also have a set of HED Ardennes Black, which are probably my favorite Aluminum wheelset right now (the wider inner diameter makes 25s feel like 28s) but the Sonic hub also seems to have very different spacing than the Campy wheels. Makes swapping wheels a PITA. Maybe I need more bikes or fewer wheels?

[mattr]

1) a pad formulated for a ceramic rim will eat an aluminium rim fairly quickly in my experience.
2) you can get spacers to adjust cassette position (wheels manufacturing used to make them i think), or you can make your own from stainless sheet of varying thickness. Just shim them all out to the same position as the one that is closest to the dropout.

And depending how tolerant you are to "badly adjusted gears", finding identically spaced wheels is a bit hit and miss. (i once built a team worth of identical bikes, identically built with 2 pairs of identical wheels (well, hubs anyway) per bike. Still had to shim a couple of the rear wheels to get the whole lot interchangeable......). On the flip side i've had probably 2 dozen sets of shimano wheels over the last 10 years, and pretty much every one puts the cassette in the same place. Except for my latest D-A (9000), which pushes it over about half a turn on the adjuster.

[shimmeD]

Try November for spacers/shims.

[Calnago]

As for swapping Campy hubs in and out of your drive train, you should have zero issues and no "reindexing" should be required. The distance between the locknut on the freehub and the first cog hasn't changed in years, so if you're having trouble with Campy/campy swaps, something else is going on. The only things I could think of might be 1) poor adjustment to start or 2) cassettes of vastly different wear on the them or 3) you've locked the wheel in a bit cockeyed to one side instead of seating it perfectly in the dropouts. Other than that, if they're all campy hubs and campy cassetttes, then the cogs (assuming all 11sp) should be in the same place as well. Different rims of different widths (but same material)... that depends how much the discrepency is and whether or not the brake tracks line up perfectly with the pads. If you leave enough adjustment in the cable via the adjuster nut, then you might be able to just adjust the pad spacing wider or narrower with that depending on the wheels. But never use pads that you used for aluminum rims on carbon rims. Aluminium is much softer than carbon and wears much much faster. And guess where some of that "wear" ends up, in your brake pads in the form of bits and pieces of aluminum shards, but you know that I'm sure. Swiss Stop used to say you can swap their yellow pads between carbon and aluminum so long as you cleaned out any aluminum shards first. But who's gonna do that. Those early yellow pads were the worst pads ever and should be destroyed with fire. Plus its just a dumb idea in the first place.

Anyway, I've always just been able to swap wheels at will between bikes, but for grins I just decided to see if they're all still compatible so set up a bike and tested a bunch of rear wheels, running them up and down through all the gears. All perfect. Even the Lightweight wheel with DT Swiss Hub internals was perfect.

In the docket and tested...
1) Newest Boras (AC3)
2) Previous generation Boras (3Diamant)
3) Previous to the 3Diamant (Ultra Two)
4) Campy Ultra Shamals (17C internal width)
5) Campy 32 hole Record hubs (laced to Nemesis rims)
6) Campy Neutron clinchers (early 2000's vintage)
7) Lightweight 20mm width rims with DT Swiss internals

I know I didn't answer all your questions, but yeah... if only one bike, then you have to make compromises unforunately. Anyway, here's the setup that I just used to test all the wheels I listed just to verify that no adjustement to the derailleurs was required, not one fraction of a turn... just killin some time...

[shimmeD]

Of course you're right, Calnago, that there should be no diff between Campag hubs. The OP does have different brand hubs on his Hed wheel though.
And, thanks for having too much time on your hands!

[Calnago]

Yes, I realize he's got different wheels, but even then sounds like he has to tweak the derailleur a bit more than I think you should. He said even between his Campy wheels he needs to adjust it. I just threw the Lightweight in a the end to check it out, but the DT Swiss type hub didn't seem to have any issues either.

[fogman]

As long as you are swapping Campagnolo wheels with the same size cassette, no adjustment should be necessary. If you are swapping to a different size cassette, then an adjustment to the H screw may be necessary to optimize shifting performance.

If you go to a larger cassette (11-27 to 11-29 for example), turn the H screw counterclockwise (approximately 1 turn) to increase the gap between the upper jockey wheel and largest cassette cog. Vice versa when going to a smaller cassette.


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[wintershade]

Interesting -- thanks Calnago and fogman. The main takeaway is I shoudl be able to switch among Campy wheels with little problems. Makes a strong case for getting rid of the Ardennes eventhough I like them slighly more than the Shamals just to make my life easier. The Sonic hubs are also noisy and annoying, though I love the grip afford by 25mm tires and a 19mm internal rim. I love my Zipp NSWs, but they mesh pretty well.

I think the other complicating factor is I do have different casettee ranges on the wheels (a mid-compact + 12/29 is my go-to, but I have run compact + 11/27, so perhaps that's also contribuing the the crappy shifting. I'll give the H screw a turn and see how that goes.