Shimano 11 cassette with Campag-can’t get it right

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wintershade
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Location: Boston, MA

by wintershade

What are the downsides to using a not-perfectly set up SRAM cassette (on trainer) with a Campy drivetrain? My situation is my road bikes are Campy 11 (12-29 and 12-27), and my Wahoo Kickr has an Shimano 11-26. Shifting is pretty decent, but I mostly ride on ERG mode in middle of cassette. Any downsides to this? Increased chain wear, etc?

Unfortunately, the 2017 KICKR no longer allows installation of a Campy hub.

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graeme_f_k
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by graeme_f_k

It's a bit of a faff but if you accutately set up your RD on a 12-up Campagnolo cassette (paying close attention to the upper / outside limit screw) then put the bike into the trainer and dial the cable tension in accurately on the middle of the Shimano cassette's sprockets, indexing will be very close to perfect for the three or four sprockets either side, as the smal error you will get is averaged out instead of accumulating over the width of the cassette.

Campagnolo use slightly differentiated spacings on all of their 11s cassettes and the differentials depend on whether they are 11-up, 12-up or 13-up. Whilst those differentials mean that if you have an all-Campag system, you don't need to worry too much about exact set up, with a Shimano cassette you have to be a little more careful as they are equally spaced right across their width. A 12-up Campag cassette is closest to a Shimano spacing though.

The set up I described above is how Campag advise that all Campag systems are set up - ie, fine tune cable tension on the middle sprocket of the cassette - most mechanics don't do this, IME.

Chain wear etc will be a smidge greater as the shift gates on a Campagnolo cassette are a different shape and placement to Shimano but I doubt that will make a measurable difference ...

Of more significance (perhaps) is that if you *do* suffer any failure in the Campag transmission components, warranty will be void.
A Tech-Reps work is never done ...
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jih
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Joined: Fri Jan 29, 2016 12:54 pm

by jih

xcnick wrote:
Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:29 am
I’m looking forward to getting the Campag cassette on today and seeing the difference in shifting! I think the best chance of getting the Shimano cassette to work as well as possible would be to use the Campag spacers between the smaller cogs (if you have any spare rather than buying 2 cassettes :lol: )
But this would only work if the part of the sprockets that touch the spacers had identical widths between systems. Like, Shimano might (for example) be 0.1mm wider sprockets and have 0.1mm thinner spacers to compensate.

You could pad out a Shimano cassette with extra spacers made from 0.1mm foil if you wanted I guess. Since Campag are marginally wider overall than Shimano it might improve things a little.

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