Campagnolo Record for less than Ultegra.
 

Campagnolo is used to varying extent on tandems, most often for shift/brake levers. I have Campy Super Record 11-speed levers, rear derailleur, cassette and chain. I really like having the 11 cogs, which surprisingly works fine with a triple.

The big disadvantage of Campy, of course, is that it is more expensive.

I've been looking to upgrade the worn 10 speed on my BMC half-bike to 11-speed, and shopped around for good prices on Campy. PBK was pretty good, but didn't have 12-29 cassette I wanted. Neither did Wiggle nor Total Cycling. So I googled Campy 12-29 cassette and found an amazing price at Slane Cycles, in Belfast, Northern Ireland (thus the UK).

The price on a complete Record group (brakes, crank, everything) at Slane is $1397. No sales tax, and free shipping. This compares to the price of Ultegra at Bike Tires Direct (typical U.S. supplier) of $1445.

(I know that tandem builders don't need the entire groupset, but I use it here as a proxy for the individual components).

From what I've seen on message boards, Slane has a good reputation. So I placed my order and I'll find out whether this is too good to be true.

I have bought Assos stuff from them - they dealt with returns to change sizes without any issues so I think you will be happy.

Enjoy Euro / $ craziness while it lasts.

Great choice! The Campy 12-29 11-speed cassette offers the ultimate cog combinations and range, IMO. The closest for us Shimano users is the 12-28 10-speed offered by BBB (heavy, individual cogs) and IRD (two versions: one with individual cogs, plus a lighter one using an alloy carrier). The 11-28 and 12-27 10-speed cassettes offered by more major manufacturers have some awkward spacings above the 19 tooth cog that a dedicated mountain-climber like me dislikes.

Exchange rate fluctuations can often result in good deals to be had when ordering internationally. I always wait for the exchange rate to dip a little before making fair-sized order the UK, and save a bunch of money by doing so.

Wow, already shipped.

Campy Record is by far my favorite groupo, at least the 10 speed version. Never tried the 11 speed.

Did you buy the last 12-29 cassette? When I click your link, there's a 12-27 but no 12-29. And it's $1642.20, not $1397.

I see what you mean. I purchased Super Record in 12-29, which they do have. In 12-29 they have neither Record nor Chorus.

The price you are getting on the group is with their default shipment to the UK, which includes a 15% VAT. If you switch the delivery destination to the (currently) VAT-free USA, you'll get the $1397 price.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/...3026683711.jpg

My shipment arrived in California today, 13 days after I ordered it (May 25th).

Everything is in order, no extra charges. I guess it is possible I could get a bill from Customs, although this hasn't happened with PBK UK orders.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/...edde4e478b.jpg

The 11-speed Record chain and SR RD and 12-29 cassette are destined for my half-bike. However, I will first try the 12-29 cassette on my tandem, which now has 12-27. I want to see if 12-29 will work with a triple. If it does, 12-29 11-speed could make for a very versatile tandem drivetrain.

Edit:

I looked up the ratio's. Interestingly, the Campy website hasn't been updated with the newly introduced 12-29. Competitive Cyclist, of course, has the needed information:

Please keep us posed on the 29t SR. I have SR on my tandem, the R/D works well with the triple and 11-25, however with the ellipitical 53t ring it 'worked' but complained a great deal when in the 53-25 combo. I went back to 53 round ring due to F/D issues and the triple on the Campy equipment. Since I had a 10s medium cage Record R/D laying around, I ended up building a custom rear derailleur out of the 10/11 speed bits. I had to trim the 10s gauge pivot to make it shorter and drill a spring alignment hole on the cage. However, I suspect the 10s medium R/D will bolt on and work with the 11s jockey wheels.

I've been chewing on going with a compact-ish setup. with the 12-29. Lightning cranks are on the way, I could most likely order a 110 spider and find a 34-36/54ish setup. Shifting that large of a range might be trick, I know the carbon F/D are not stiff enough.

Another place with cheap Campy stuff is Ribble cycles. I bought my Centaur carbon shifters from then for around $235. Recently I bought a Shimano 6700 Ultegra crankset for $188.
Their customer service is not great, they do not answer the phone or emails and my crankset was delayed a few weeks due to the icelandic ash cloud.
I would still buy from them again.
After having used Shimano for a long time I am happy with my Centaur shifters. They are cheaper and lighter than Shimano and they are repairable and the hoods have a better shape.
I also prefer the feel of the shifting. I am using a JTEK shiftmate as the rest of the drive train is Shimano.

Just for comparison the price for Centaur carbon shift levers with shipping:

Slane: $213.81
Ribble: $186.85

Ultegra groupset at Ribble: $706.58 (not all options in stock)
They are out of stock on Campy groupsets.

Does the JTEK shiftmate work well? I need something for a front derailleur and campy shifters. I'd like to run the Rotor Rings on this bike, but the Campy derailleurs are not happy about that size spread of rings. The SRAM red doesn't quite cut it with campy shifters either.

The JTEK shiftmate is all about making RDs compatible with shifters of other brands. Running Campy shifters on any FD should work without a JTEK shiftmate. Based on your question you appear to be concerned about getting the Campy FD to work with a wider range of rings than it was intended for. No adaptor will help you there.

Are you using the 11-speed shifters on both left and right? I started out with SR 11-speed shifters, these worked the RD fine, but the 11-speed does not provide sufficient travel to work a triple FD. So, I purchased a Centaur 10-speed lever for the left, which does work a triple (now the left SR shifter is going on my half-bike).

Even this was not sufficient, however, to get the Campy triple FD to work. I had to use a Shimano triple shifter and Dura-Ace chainrings. Now it shifts great. Once I verify that the 12-29 works, I will write all this up on a thread here.

Thanks for the response and you are correct. The problem I had with the SRAM Red F/D was the amount of travel it produced with the campy SR shifters. IT would rub in 8 of the 10 gears in low or not shift to the big ring. However, I did not try clamping the cable to the bottom of the bolt (effectively shortening) to reduce the mechanical advantage the lever has over the F/D. I just went back to the 53t ring and went with it for now.


**Edit***
Ritterview: Good call! I'll keep that in mind. I have SR 11 left & right shifters working currently with a triple. I"m using a 2008 10 speed Record F/D.

This would be a double FD, because the last Record triple FD was in 2006. I got one of those NOS thinking it would work, but it didn't.

2006 Record Triple FD:
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/705...rdtriplefd.png

I then tried a Campy COMP Triple FD, neither did it work. I thought that the problem was the narrow chain, and the space between the chainrings being too large. But I don't think that was it. Some of my travails are discussed here.

Ultimately, the Shimano triple FD and chainrings worked.

FYI - I am using a Campy triple comp FD with Centaur shifters and it does work with a FSA Gossamer triple crankset. Its a little clumsy compared to my Dura Ace / Ultegra setup on my single.
The shifting is not as quick and it takes some getting used to how far to shift the levers go from each ring, more so when shifting from larger to smaller ring.

Slightly used Record 10 Ergo off Ebay with a NOS Record 10 Triple found at BikeTiresDirect.com shifting 9 or 10 speed chains running on daVinci cranks with FSA chainrings.... works like a dream: always has, always will.

Only time it over or undershifts is when I forget to trim-in or trim-out the FD stop when I change from 9 to 10 speed chains... or when I just make a late shift into the granny ring with the drive chain under a lot of torque, e.g., operator error.

If there was a point to my post it's this: Trying to keep your tandem on the same bleeding edge of new single rider bike components can and usually is a PIA. It's been that way for a long time, and will likely remain so in the future.

Ritterview: That's the F/D that I'm using with SR left shifter. SLK cranks on the rear currently with 30/39/53 gearing. I seem to think that it rubs a bit in the last 3-4 'low' gears. I'll have to wait for my wheels to be sure.

I'm considering going to a double setup. With 110bcd, I think I can find a 54t front ring and run a 34-36ish small ring and be done with these issues. Of course, gear spread would be 'tricky' to shift, but with a 12-29 rear cassette, I doubt we'd ever need more.

Again, let me be the camel with his nose in the tent...

I'm not sure what you mean by the "low" gears, but if you mean the three smallest rear sprockets, e.g., 12, 13, 14... and what you've got is chain rub on the derailleur when you're in the granny ring and sometimes even with the chain in the middle ring, that's not all that uncommon for tandems with their non-standard rear chainlines on 145mm rear-spaced frames and, worse yet on 160mm rear spaced frames. You can also find that what initially sounds like chain rub on a front derailleur cage is, in fact, the chain bushing up against the middle (when you're in granny) or big (when you're in the middle) chain rings when you're cross chained in the aforementioned smallest rear cogs. Again, its usually the combination of a rear crank / bottom bracket that's designed to have the correct chain line for a 130mm rear spaced frame with a 145mm (or 160mm) rear spaced tandem that creates these interference issue. Moreover, the bigger the gap between the big - medium - small chain rings the more pronounced the chain ring rub can be.

The latter is mentioned in regard to your proposed 54/34 "compact" (or standard, if you prefer) 110 BCD crank configuration. Unless you get really fancy by using a superwide rear bottom bracket and 'far-out' front derailleur mount from Santana or one of FSA's tandem FD mounts, you'll most likely have all kinds of chain rub on the big chain ring when you're in any of the smaller cogs.

Again, I'm not exactly clear on what interference issues you're having, so I could be way off base here. But, as mentioned before, when it comes to tandems and shifting systems sometimes the best performance will come from the less complex solutions... and even then you'll be hard pressed to get a perfect shifting solution if you're not using a tandem with narrow rear spacing (e.g., 130mm or 135mm) that doesn't have the same chain line issues that the more standard-sized production tandem frames use, e.g., 145mm and 160mm.

Feel free to ignore and keep us posted on your science project.

Completely OT: So, Brad, when you got the notion that if a V6 could be fitted into MR2, that this would make a terrific performance car, did you ever encounter any obstacles, and did any observers ever cluck with disapproval and say what you were doing shouldn't or couldn't be done?


http://home.roadrunner.com/~bedellracing/img/trophy.jpg

Yes, which motivated me to dig deeper. There are still people who say it isn't a good platform. Those people usually are ones who can not thing outside of the box and are limited by parts that are available over the counter. They quickly learned how potent the car was when I started setting FTD at the local autocross events on street tires. What's ironic is that I sold that car before the magazine published. Bought it back 4 years later and it had no mechanical issues. I'm pretty happy to have something that heavily modified out there still running strong. I've sold the MR2 this past year and replaced it with a 2002 996 turbo now. Ironically, it's all stock sans the trailer hitch for the bike rack. http://home.roadrunner.com/~brad.bedell/yellowturbo.jpg


"Low" gears are the largest sprockets in the rear and smallest in the front. High gear is for going faster, low gear is for going slower. I did kinda make a custom chainline by using a smaller width FSA bearing on the chain side and a larger one with spacer on the timing side to keep everything in line. This works well for my stoker as we've done some spacing on her single bike to prevent one of her legs from kicking out. I may see about putting a 70mm wide BB on the rear of the tandem. This would help and I know the lightning cranks can be built this way.

Another option for me, since I'm building a 'custom' axle width on the hub I'm setting up. I could offset the cassette 2mm to the inside and make dish adjustments on the rim. The derailleur capacity would still work there and might be just enough to help the line. Of course, I'll play with spacers on the stand before I go to cutting metal. I'd rather not buy several axles.

*one more edit*
Or, you make a good argument for a 130 or 135mm spacing...I should check to see if zipp makes an adapter for 135mm for their disc...

Brad,

It would be great if you could figure out how to use a Shimano crankset on the rear.
It would require some sort of custom or modified crank arm with the pinch bolt and sync chain ring on the left hand side.
Maybe somehow a spider could be welded to it?
Not sure if the chain line could work with 145mm spacing though.

These issues (which are not really that bad, don't get me wrong) are why I stuck with Campy 10 for the tandem. Since most of the riding we do is climbing and descending, we need the triple, and no integrated shifter shifts a triple better than Campy 10.

Our Calfee has:
Shifters: Chorus 10
FD: Campy Comp Triple
RD: Campy Comp Triple
Chainrings/Cranks: Davinci cranks with FSA chainrings (salsa small ring due to best load-holding on grades over 15%) 53/42/28
Cassette: SRAM 10 spd 11-28 (have used both Red and Force level)
Chain: SRAM Red 1090R (we use this since it has a quick link)
Misc: Jtek shift mate.

I have the 09+ Campy on my solo bike, and I love the ergos... but the shifting is still better on the pre-09 style IMHO.

I understand low and high gear, I just wasn't understanding what might cause chain rub in the lower gear range on a 145mm rear-spaced tandem using somewhat compatible components.

However, in light of the 'customizations' and components that you've made or have used, I now have a better appreciation for some of the compatibility gaps you're trying to bridge with your tandem project.