Is it possible to cobble together a home made conversion cassette? So you can make a Campagnolo spaced cassette for a Shimano splined hub. I have a 10 speed Campy Record groupset, and shimano splined hubs.

Currently, I have an Ambrosio conversion cassette, but they don't seem to be available anymore. I'm aware of the IRD conversion cassettes, but they are very expensive. It owuld be cheaper to buy a new wheel.

I guess I'd need a cassette with all 10 cogs separate (ie none attached to a spider) and a bunch of Campy spacers.... Any ideas? I think Miche comes with all separate cogs...

Also, I am cheap.

There's not enough spline length on a shimano hub.

I think you are right. One thing I noticed about the Ambrosio cassette I had was that the big cogs bend back toward the spokes to create more length.

You fill your freehub body with nine 10-speed cogs and space them 1.7 mm apart (which is what you want, instead of 1.6) and just have one dead click in your shifter.

There is if the freehub is designed for 11 speed Shimano road cassettes

I've got mates who are running 10-speed Campag with Shimano cassette, and the .1mm can be ironed out if you set the derailleur adjustment from the centre of the cassette.

Maybe I'll try that when my American Classic conversion cassette wears out. I have a nice tubular wheel with Shimano free hub that I'd like to keep using.

Or the 9 cogs idea.

Use a Campy 8 or early 9-speed era rear derailleur and an unmodified Shimano 10-speed cassette.

Veloce, Daytona, Athena, whatever. Should cost about $50 on Fleabay.

The cable pull of the Campy 10 shifters, mated with the 1.43 actuation ratio of the older Campy derailleur will perfectly match the Shimano 10-speed cassette spacing.

The math works, and I've been running this combo on multiple bikes for many years. Flawless shifting.

Another combo that works is (the later) 9-speed Ergopower shifters mated with the older Campy (year 1993-2000) rear derailleurs. Shifts flawlessly over a Shimano 9-speed cassette. This is what I'm riding today. Perfect shifting.

Does it depend on the shifters ? I'm using 2009/2010 Centaur. The last year of the multi-shift before "Powershift"

OP is using Record, not sure what year.

There are few ways to do this, as others have described above. I've got experience with several different methods, so I'll chime in with my findings.

If you're going to just respace a Shimano cassette, DaveSS is right that an 8/9/10 Shimano freehub isn't wide enough, but alcjphil is also correct that if you use an 11-speed hub there is enough room. Also, as ljsense said, you can just drop a cog to make the extra room. I think either of these methods requires some spacer behind the cassette. Shimano's 10-speed cassettes are made to extend beyond the end of the freehub, so you have a little wiggle room in the size of the spacer. I think you need about 1 mm.

The other thing you should be aware of is that you can't replace all of the spacers on a Shimano cassette. On Tiagra cassettes, most of the cogs are riveted together, though you can undo that. The bigger issue is that the three biggest cogs are in a spider with builtin spacing and the two smallest cogs have spacers builtin. In practice, that doesn't matter. As it turns out, if you replace the other 5 spacers with Shimano 9-speed spacers (cheaply available), the spacing will be very close to perfect. The limit screws let you fix the derailleur position for the biggest and smallest cogs dead on, and the rest will work well as long as you're within about 0.5 mm. With the 9-speed spacers, you can get everything within 0.25mm.

The other trick, which Dave Mayer described, is mixing generations of Campagnolo shifters and derailleurs. This works great. I've also had success using a Sachs New Success rear derailleur with Campy 10-speed shifters. One caveat here is that some of the older Campy derailleurs extend a little further in toward the spokes than a Shimano derailleur would so you might get some scraping of the spokes in the big cog when you have the limit screw set wide enough to shift onto that cog. I had this problem with one bike and decided to drop a cog to make more space. Otherwise, it shifts as well as any bike I have.

Model of shifter doesn't matter. Xenon 10-speed and Centaur 10-speed pulls the same amount of cable as 10-speed Record. Of course, my 'fix' is relevant to Campy 10-speed shifters while running a 10-speed Shimano cassette.

I run a 10sp Ultegra cassette with my Chorus 10 setup, but as already mentioned this only works on an 11sp Shimano hub. You can either use the spacers from a 9sp Shimano setup or add .2mm spacers to the existing 10sp cassette between all of the loose cogs. The last three large cogs are a unit, but you'll be OK there. You need a 1mm spacer behind it all so that it lines up perfectly with a regular Campy 10 cassette. I'm using this setup on my trainer and it works great, but how it would work on the road I can't promise. If you look at the drawings of the 11sp Shimano hub you'll see that it is actually 131, not 130 spaced. They just bogarted an extra 1mm to give room for the 11.

I used .2mm thick stiff plastic sheets to make the spacers and cut them by hand using the 1mm back spacer as a template. It was a PITA but ultimately worked great. My guess is that it would wear out on the road but is fine on the trainer.

Any solution that doesn't involve mucking around with cassette spacing is to be preferred; it's all down the toilet when your cassette is worn.

Not really. I can take my .2mm spacers and add them to the next cassette. A new 10sp Ultegra cassette runs about $50US. That's a lot cheaper than a lot of the other options out there. The plastic sheets I used to cut out the spacers I think cost about $5, and I have lots left over. I'll never run out if I need to cut new ones each time in any case, that is if I can find them. I'll have to do a lot of indoor riding to wear out the cassette too.

Buy a suitable model Shiftmate and make all the problems go away. Having standard 10-speed Shimano cassettes work properly with Campy brifters and rear derailleur is easy with it.

I have a Shiftmate. It makes fitting or removing a cable into a hassle, but I dig how it makes the RD loop not a loop anymore.

Yeah, it makes fitting the rear derailleur cable a bit more involved but it's not difficult and how often do you do it anyway? It's a lot less additional hassle than trying to jury-rig cassette spacing.

The thing I didn't like about the Shiftmate was that you were then locked into the other cassette type unless you wanted to change the ratio each time, and I'm not even sure that's possible. What I needed was to be able to use either a Campy wheel or my Shimano Kickr Core trainer with a quick swap. I just take off my wheel and put the bike on the trainer and it is ready to go, and vice versa and I never have to fuss with anything. The two different cassettes are perfectly aligned with each other so no adjustment ever needed. I'm still sometimes amazed I made it work that way.

I'm not sure if its possible to keep the cable and from fraying, but couldn't you just remove the shiftmate and revert to standard setup? About 10 minutes? The reverse operation would require you to have enough spare cable. About 1.5 inches, or 4cm? Would that work?

10 minutes? I just pull the bike off the trainer and put the wheel on, about 15 seconds. While the weather is still OK for going outside I do this 3-4 times a week. It is just quick release off and on, same as swapping wheels.

Zacster, I was addressing your point about when "you wanted to change the ratio each time". My post was to address an issue where you had different wheels with different cassettes with different spacing and wanted to swap one out for the other. I was thinking that you could probably remove the ShiftMate and replace it if you had two favorite wheels with different cassettes.

I probably didn't understand your point though.

No worries. But that is the issue with Shiftmate if you have multiple wheelsets of multiple types. You can't just "on the fly" swap wheels of different types. I have one combination that I made work without it.

OK, to clarify a little...

I currently have a 10 Speed Campy Record groupset from around 2005ish and an Ambrosio 10speed conversion cassette on a Fulcrum Racing 5 wheel (which, is 11speed Shimano compatible). All 10 cogs on the Ambrosio conversion cassette are separate.

I was thinking of buying a 10speed Shimano compatible cassette that has all 10 cogs "loose" and using the spacers from the current conversion cassette. I believe both Amrbosio and Miche cassettes come "loose" with none riveted together or attached to a spyder.

I *think* this should work?

A jtek is another option.

As is just buying a Campy wheelset -which would be the priciest.

Better check the thickness of the Ambrosio and Miche cogs as they may be different than Shimano's and would require different thickness spacers to work properly. I know from experience that Miche's 10sp cogs have a different thickness as well as have an offset to make it even more confusing.

OK, you are actually in luck. You can use an Ultegra cassette as that has 7 loose cogs with the last 3 as a unit. Put .2mm spacers in between each loose cog in addition to the provided ones. Put a 1mm spacer behind the stack next to the spokes. You can make .2mm spacers out of stiff plastic sheets from an art supply store and use the 1mm spacer as a template and a very sharp exacto knife. The last three cogs' spacing won't matter much, especially since the last cog will line up due to the limit screw. Really, you end up with one cog that is .2mm off from a perfect shift and you have more play than that in any case.