mnmkpedals 

I'm treading into uncharted waters for myself now as I'm planning to do a campagnolo build with some components I traded for on here. I have most of an 8 speed Veloce group, but hoping to do downtube friction shifters with it-- but from what I've been reading, I have to be fairly attentive to drive train compatibility?

I'm working on tracking dow a crankset, DT shifters and wheelset, but before I pull the trigger, was wondering:

What would be the best friction DT shifters to pair with it? Or ones to avoid? And what to look for? Synchro, c-record, all this is new to me...

And, any issues if I pair it all with 7 speed cassette?

Any advice for this campy-novice is much appreciated!

smontanaro 

Probably not if you intend to use friction shifting. Compatibility comes into play mostly when you want to use index shifting. In this case, the only issue is likely whether the shifters you choose will pull enough cable to move the rear derailleur completely across the cassette from low to high. With a 7-speed cassette (about 5mm narrower than an 8-speed), even less worry. You'll wind up slightly restricting the range of the derailleur a little using the low- and high-limit screws. That said, I generally only play in the pre-indexing sandbox, and thus have next-to-no direct experience with that modern stuff you're working with.

RobbieTunes

What Skip said. If your shifter pulls the cable and the RD answers the call, friction-wise, you're good.

Tim_Iowa

for downtube/friction, the best in current production are the Rivendell Silver shifters or Dia-Compe ENE (same shifter, same maker, different body)
They'll shift anything from 5 to 9 speeds.

For index, you'd have to find vintage 8 speed Campagnolo downtube shifters. Shimano and Campagnolo used different cassette spacing for 8 speed.

gfk_velo

Unless you are looking at Ergopower (combined brake lever / shift lever) I'd steer clear of index shifting - there are a few compatibility issues to work around, even then, as there were / are two distinct generations of Campagnolo 8s Ergopower-based indexing and you need to be pretty sure of what you have - but indexed downtube shifting for Campag in the "8s Era" was, well, not their finest hour. It can be made to work acceptably but it's not easy.

If you are determined to use a downtube index solution, in practical terms you can use any Sachs-Maillard-based indexed 7 or 8s freewheel solution in the back, or even (say this quietly) a Shimano 7 or 8s cassette based solution, or of course and most correctly, a Campagnolo 8s cassette (still available) mounted on the current Campagnolo cassette body (though you do need to pay attention to how you mount the cassette and particularly to lockring tightness ...)

There is an amount of "slop" in an 8s system that doesn't exist in more modern systems that means the small index interval differences that you get between manufacturers in 7 and 8s systems can be mostly catered for ... in any case, there's likely to be a fair amount of wear in any used derailleurs that you buy, so, as long as you steer clear of the absolute operating limits of the system (very short chainstays, right at the derailleur capacity limits, very steel / very shallow seat angles, very deep, very shallow BB drop) an acceptable, if not aperfect shift can probably be acheived.

You'll need to find a set of 8s Synchro 2 levers - I worked with Synchro 1 extensively when it was launched as a team mechanic - and we never got it to work really well in the real world - but Synchro 2 could be coaxed into good operation with the drop-parallelogram derailleurs in the Veloce through to Record ranges.

Having said all of that, though, better is to look at a retro-friction based solution using (as other respondents have said) the Dia-Compe or Rivendell solutions.

If you do that, 7 or 8 speed makes little difference and you can of course mix and match chainsets, chains, cassettes and shifters with relative impunity as the way the shift works is far more "in your hands" than it is with an index system.

You can also compensate in a way that an indexed system can't, for issues caused by wear and tear and simple "sloppiness" that is characteristic of parts that will be, now, in many cases, 20+ years old ...

It does of course take time to acquire the skill to use a friction-based downtube system to it's maximum advantage and it's quite difficult to go beyond an 8, or certainly a 9-speed spacing as the accuracy with which you have to move the RH shift lever increases, although I do have a 10s bike on downtube shifters and our race tandem that we run on 1 x 11s has a friction-based bar-end shifter ... that works perfectly - any imperfection in the shifting is mine!

A lot of it comes down to your expectations of how a bike should shift. If you want to be able to shift without really thinking about it too much and for the shifting to be very fast and flawless, with a minimal need to feather your pedalling as the shift happens - then go for a full 11s, ErgoPower based system. If you are happy that shifting will be an acquired skill but you can have a great deal of flexibility built in, then go for a downtube or bar-end based friction shift system ...

Most of the above would also be true if you were looking at Shimano systems (with the exception of the obviously-Campag based info) ... 8s was more forgiving than 9, 10 or 11 are and friction opens all sorts of things up that a system-based approach doesn't allow.

Road Fan

As far as I know, there were two designs for the free hub/cassette splines, for 8-speed Campagnolo. Beyond that, Campy 8-speed, 9-speed, 10-speed and 11-speed all fit into the same cassette space on a 130 mm hub. That means that the lateral travel needed from the derailleur should be the same, barring that the end margins might be a little different for the higher gear count systems, since the intended chains are a little narrower. So any combination of friction levers and rear derailleur that can actually traverse your entire cassette should work, even if you have a Campy hub/cassette mated to say, a SRAM rear derailleur.

On my Terraferma I first ran friction super-compact in the front and at times SRAM and Shimano 8, 9, and 10 speed cassettes, with a Deore derailleur. I even tried a Campy Racing Triple rear derailleur, which was designed for 8-speed Ergo. It worked well but could not handle the sheer gear range of the Deore. Later I changed to a 48/42/30 triple in the front. All these combinations had no problem, other than the normal ratio problems (8 speed jumps too wide, super compact ratios hard to track through, and a poor choice of crankset for the super-compact). But derailleur cable pull was NOT a problem. The compatibility issues really do go away in friction mode, as long as your lever/derailleur combinations have enough range of cable pull.

mnmkpedals 

Thanks for the great thorough advice. Yeah, I'm actually wanting it to be friction down tube shifters. All my other bikes are friction and I like the ease. I just wasn't sure which post super/nuovo record dt friction sets from them were well regarded. I like the look of c-record ones I think, assuming they are good.

gfk_velo

There were actually three spline patterns, with the Titanium 8 speed having it's own pattern ... but to all intent and purpose, there were two that matter - 8s "normal" and the rest (as the Ti 8s will mate to the "new" 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 body with a little modification of the sprockets. I did it for a client only a couple of weeks ago in fact.

The lateral traverse on the RD changed when Campag made the drop parallelogram RDs - prior to that, they'd happily span a 7s screw on (around 36mm total travel) but ask them to do 8 and getting the last wee bit under load was always a gamble - the return spring was almost fully decompressed at that point and any wear and tear at all led to a risk that the derailleur might work in the stand but often not on the road.

11s is around 3 mm wider than 10, the extra width being accommodated by dishing the sprocket nearest the spokes slightly, and pushing the smallest sprocket slightly closer to the drop-out. This was the conumdrum that Shimano were fighting & why they ended up making their 11s OLN 131.5 mm ...

The biggest problem with downtube shift is the size of the cable recovery barrel. Older 5 and 6s shifters just don't wind enough cable. Even later shifters like Simplex Retrofriction struggle a but beyond 7 / 8s. You can improve matters by placing a short length of thick Nokon cable liner round the gear inner right up against the gear lever, so effectively increasing the radius of the cable by 0.5mm or so - a small gain but worth having. Running the gear cable the "wrong" side of the cable pinch bolt can also help.

Road Fan

What you're saying is true, unless you find a combination that does have enough cable pull. With my Deore I'm using an early and beat-up Campy 8-speed shift lever. It can pull enough cable for a Shimano 10s cassette, and traverse an SRAM 8s and a Shimano 10s. I have not tried an 11s.

The lever travel for the rear derailleur is not too far from 180 degrees, but that doesn't matter with friction. It still works.