modern drivetrain on older bike
 

I have a custom steel bike (89) that I really love. It's campy chorus & athena (all original) and running a 7sp. I'd like to upgrade the drivetrain to 8sp with shifter brake levers. As I don't want to dump a ton of money into the bike I was thinking of purchasing campy 8sp mirage shifters & a rear derailler and an 8sp casette. Is there anything else I'd need? Do I need to change the front derailleur? Aren't the campy front derailleurs friction based.

I don't think I can go to 9sp because I'd have to replace my rear wheel which I don't want to do. Currently I'm running a 7sp cassette with a spacer on an 8sp hub. I assume I can't put a campy 8sp casette on a shimano hub, right? Any reason any 8 cassette wouldn't work with the campy?

Campy 8-speed is an orphan that isn't being supported at all. The components, when you can find them, command collector level prices.

Putting a 9/10-speed wheel (130 mm) into your frame (126 mm) is practical even without cold setting it. You have to work a little to slip the wheel in but it's not much of a struggle. If you want to upgrade and remain with Campy, you might at well go all the way to 10-speed as Campy seems to have pretty much abandoned 9-speed also.

Centaur or Veloce would be good choices to keep the cost moderate. If you stick with downtube shifters your current fd would be fine as the front shifting is strictly friction. If you want to use Ergo brifters, either find pre-2007 ones or a new fd will probably be needed as the new "QS" brifters aren't ratcheted like their predecessors.

I agree with HillRider. Buying into Campy 8 or 9 at this point doesn't seem like a good idea to me. PBK is selling the Veloce levers for $120 (though they are QS).

If I go 10 then (correct me if I'm wrong) my costs would go up substantially. I'd need a new wheel, narrow chain, and new crankset, in addition to what I'd need below.
If I go 8 I only need new brifters, rear cogset, rear dereaileur

The primary point of this endeavor for me is to get brifters. If I could have done that with my 7 speed setup that would have been my first option. I'm trying to do this whole thing for close to $200 if I can. Otherwise I just think I'd put the money toward a low end entry bike like a trek 1000.

I've got a couple of 80's steel Centurion bikes that I've retrofitted with modern parts.

The upgraded drivetrain might be cheaper if you went with Shimano - I don't know how committed you are to keeping the bike with Campy stuff.

You may as well consider 9- or 10-speed because Campy 8-speed is crazy-expensive nowadays as HillRider noted, and Shimano 9-speed parts aren't much more expensive than Shimano 8-speed parts. Either direction would necessitate a new rear wheel (or at least rear hub + rebuild; a new rear wheel would likely be cheaper anyway) so you may as well go with 9-speed.

If you're already using an 8-speed hub with spacer your frame likely is spread to 130mm rear spacing, or at least can handle it easily since it's steel, and 8, 9 and 10-speed rear hubs are 130mm spacing on road bikes.

First, a custom steel frame bike is probably better than any Trek 1000. You can sell your old Campy group off on ebay for several hundred dollars if it's in good shape. That will help defray the cost of a new group. Hillrider is correct. Just buy a Veloce build kit and be done with it. GVH bike has the complete kit for under a grand. http://www.gvhbikes.com/ It will blow away anything Trek makes. Good luck.

Tim

I put a shimano 9sp wheel, cassette and chain on a 1981 steel bike but kept the old friction Campy NR shifters and derailleurs. The frame needed to be slightly spread to fit the wheel but it wasn't any problem. The shifting was actually better than ever that way.

You could probably put Shimano 9sp on it without any problem, or Campy 10. But to pay "under a grand" for the veloce kit would stop me. You would need wheels too. Given that kind of cost I'd stay with 105 as there's a lot more of it around than campy, especially when it comes to wheels. I know this because I've been looking for Campy wheels for over a year now and there never seem to be any great bargains out there on eBay.

You could buy a BikesDirect bike with the group you want and it would be cheaper than buying the parts separately, and you'd get a frame thrown in for good measure.

convert
 

http://www.branfordbike.com/cgi-bin/...R_ID=141406685

You may convert any 1999 to current, Campagnolo right side Ergo shift lever to shift with any Campagnolo 8, 9 or 10 speed rear derailleur

convert these: 15% off

http://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...s%20%2D%20Road

http://www.nashbar.com/nashbar_bike_...biggie-_-15Off

zcaster, I can see you don't understand what is in a build kit. The actual group itself plus, stem, bars, tape, seat, seatpost etc. Most importantly is WHEELS. A build kit is every single piece you need to make a bike except frame/fork. There is nothing else you need to buy to build a frameset. So, under a grand for a Veloce build kit is a real deal. GVH will work with you on stem length and bar size so you can the correct fit.

According to GVH, the Veloce build kit has factory Campy wheels too.

A few weeks ago, Nashbar had Scirrocos on sale for something like $250.00 a pair. You must not have been looking too hard. That is the killer deal of the century on factory Campy wheels. Exactly what constitutes a bargain on Campy wheels?

Tim