What brifters are compatible with Campy ? Other than Campy of course

I am working on a beater bike for a friend and he has a limited budget, looking for brifters cheaper than Campy.

His bike is an older Trek with 8 speed Campy. Is using friction downtube shifters now, wants to try brifters.

Shimano 7 speed indexing is compatible with Campy 8 speed, but for loosing that 8th cog use. (Both used 5mm c-c cog spacing).

JTek Shift Mates can translate the cable pull (actuation ratio) from one brand's levers to another brand's cassette or der. This is how I run Shimano 9 speed cassettes with Campy 9 speed Ergo levers. Andy

As I recall the 8sp Campagnolo cassette had the same spacing as an 8sp Shimano cassette or it was super close that you could switch rear wheels during a race with the other without too much adjustment.
But you still need the 8sp levers, and I think you'll find old 8sp Campagnolo Ergo power levers and old 8sp Shimano STI levers to be about the same price. You'll just have to lurk until you find a good deal. Or maybe a BF member will have a pair in the old 'bike part box' they would be willing to sell you.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/33432231397...MAAOSw62lhTK1m

A bit higher end Shimano, you might be able to do better
https://www.ebay.com/itm/16531939330...UAAOSwtA5h~uRY

Brifters + cheap beater with Campy don't really go together, but...

Your best option is probably original Campy 8 speed brifters. As far as I know they were pretty durable and rebuld-able. There are plenty of sets on ebay. Any other brifter option is going be roughly the same price, plus you'll need to add the cost of the kludge (Shift Mate) to make it work.

Campy 8 and Shimano 7 (not 8) had the same cassette spacing. This is fine for switching wheels, but the cable pull of the shifters is not even close. Campy pulls a lot more cable.

Campy 8: 3.5mm per click
Shimano 7: 2.9mm per click
Shimano 8: 2.8mm per click
Campy 10: 2.8mm per click

You cannot use a Shimano 8 shifter to index a Campy 8 drivetrain (unless there's a Shift Mate for that combination.)

P.S. I included Campy 10 because it happens to have the same cable pull as Shimano 8, which means you CAN put a Campy 10 shifter on an otherwise Shimano 8 drivetrain and it will shift perfectly. I've done this many times.

Depends what you're starting with. 8 and 9 speeds, match Campy brifters and derailer, or Shimano brifters and derailer.

Old stuff, hope you (or your friend) enjoys the 'bay. New stuff, Shimano Claris would work (if you could just find them!).

Brifters are not compatible with Campy. Campy rejects anything called a brifter. They're called shifters, Campy understands things like that.

Nothing is compatible with Campy. Even Campy is often incompatible with itself. That's why it's a bad idea to run Campy in general.

I stand corrected !

Ouch !!

I think finding a used set of Campy 8 speed brifters might be his best bet. Good point. Ebay is your friend.

Campagnolo stuff especially from that era was rebuildable and at one point you could find those parts (with the pandemic not as sure) in terms of compatibility you might find some Old Sachs New Success ErgoPower levers but I am unsure exact compatibility but they are probably hard to find and not much cheaper than the quite similar Campagnolo levers (probably because they were manufactured by Campy? but someone who really knows will hopefully chime in)

What you could do is get some Gevenalle shifters and he would still be running friction (unless you kludged some Shimano stuff with the J-Tek Shiftmate stuff) but it would get everything in the same spot. However if you have Campagnolo just get the right stuff and pay the piper it is Campagnolo not some cheap-o crap.

Vintage SACHS

Here is a good derailleur/shifter reference page.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bicycl...ing_Dimensions

There is some overlap between Shimano and Campagnolo. But, not perfectly straight forward.

See section 3.5 "mixing", and the multi-color table

A 7 speed Shimano compatible brifter/derailleur should work on 7 sprockets of of an 8 speed Campagnolo cassette.

If you move to 9-speed Campagnolo, then the "pointy hood" 9 speed levers will work with 8 speed derailleurs. The "round hood" levers will need an updated rear derailleur.

Campagnolo is generally forgiving of Front derailleur configurations.

Thanks for the great source of information !
You got me to thinking, my old Trek has an 8 speed Campy cassette that i have removed the smallest cog and now it it is a 7 speed. I use downtube friction shifters and it shifts dandy. From what I understand maybe I could use Shimano index shifters. I like the downtube
shifter setup so I would need to find Shimano downtube index shifters, probably not available for 7 or 8 speeds, but an interesting idea.

you could always stay friction, Shimano had downtube indexing shifters for 7 speed, I had some 600/ultegra/tricolor not sure about 8 speed.

Yeah, I will keep them friction. I am actually enjoying riding the old steed with friction.

Shimano 8 and Campagnol 8 are not compatible. There use to be spacers for the Shimano 8 block that would allow for using Campagnolo shifters. I suppose you might be able to use Shimano spacers on a Campagnolo block to be compatible with a Shimano shifting system.
I would ignore the disparaging remarks about Campagnolo. I have used 8, 9 and 10 speed without problems and the Ergo shifters are rebuildable. They don't have the ugly cable popping out the side either.

Here is a Shimano DA block with the now out of production spacers. I don't remember but I think you can use 9 speed Campagnolo spacers in the 8 speed Shimano block and get to the same spacing.

The caveat is the sprocket ring, does it have enough threads to tighten. Mine didn't and I had to find one that had more threads (a longer thread because there is just one). Campagnolo stack is bigger than Shimano.
DA/WM blcok on Flickr

I’m always fascinated with mix-n-match and I think I have a solution.

If you can run a cassette spaced at Shimano 8 speed on the Campagnolo freehub, you might be able to use a Microshift DynaSys 10 speed drop bar shifter with the 1.4 ratio Campy RD.

I think 10 speed DynaSys pulls 3.4mm X 1.4 Campy ratio = 4.76mm cog spacing. Shimano 8 spacing is 4.8mm.

Not sure on the FD. Maybe an R8 or R9.

John