Road Fan

My Mondonico is upgraded with a modern Campy 10 drivetrain: Record 10 speed Al crank 53/39, 13/29 Centaur cassette, Veloce silver long-cage rear mech, and Veloce silver Ergo power levers. Front mech is a 2006 or so Chorus - no problems with it. All the parts were new or NOS except the Ergos. But the Ergos were disassembled and cleaned when I had a local shop attack the problem. They were not successful, but are just not that Campy-aware. I really think the levers are working correctly.

The problem is, I can't get the rear indexing to track all across the cassette, even with lengthy sessions of very small adjustments of the tension barrel. It's easy to get it to work right on the smaller 6 or 7 cogs, but it nearly always loses track on the three biggest ones.

A friend who solved this problem on his DeRosa modernization says the different levels and generations of Campy cassettes have different spacer thicknesses, in addition to different arrangements of cogs being joined together. So, presumably you can't just mix cassettes, Ergopowers, and perhaps rear derailleurs and maintain compatibility. He ended up installing a matched 2009 Centaur gruppo.

Is this apparent incompatibility a real problem, or do I really have something else going on? Are they all supposed to be interchangeable? If there are good combos and bad ones, what Ergo/cassette combos work correctly?

DaveSSS 

While there are a couple of spacers of different thickness, they should not have been mixed up unless the cassette was used when installed. New cassettes have a plastic guide holding the thing together in the right order. Campy shows the spacers in the instructions and spare parts lists, readily available on their website. The different spacers don't alter the cog's center to center spacing. Most often, they transition from loose cogs to grouped cogs or the largest cog that is dished.

https://www.campagnolo.com/repository...kets-09-09.pdf

You didn't mention what year of shifters or RD you have. They could be 2006 or earlier that have the same mechanism as Record shifters of those years, '07-'08 escape shifters (bad choice), or the new ultrashift levers. The escape shifters will only shift one cog at a time with the thumb button. You can't push the thumb button once and get many clicks to shift several cogs smaller.

'07-'08 Centaur and lower level RD, made to work with escape shifters may have a weak spring in the RD that does not work properly with the new ultrashift levers. Any other year or model of RD should work fine.

Your buddy is wrong about different years having different spacing. Campy 10 spacing is 4.15mm and has been since it came out in 2000.

When evaluating a shifting problem you should start by with a low cable tension and increase it until you get good shifts to larger cogs. Only after that is accomplished should you worry about shifts to smaller cogs. If you have the weak RD spring and/or a cable friction problem, the shifts to smaller cogs may hesitate and not work properly. Then new Campy ultra low friction cable housing should be used with ultrashift ergo levers.

canopus 

I'm with Dave on this one, check your cassette spacers. I purchased a NOS Centaur cassette and the O spacer (2.55mm) had been swapped out sometime in its past to a thicker spacer which would have thrown the 23-26-29 shifts. The other big spacers are N spacers (2.4mm thick) and if you get them out of order you can cause the symptom you are seeing.

Road Fan

My Ergos are not escape-type. The thumb button on both the left and right can cause many cogs to shift. I really think they are 2005 or 2006, but I think that mainly because the brake and shift levers are aluminum. But I did buy them used.

I got the cassette in a Campy box with a Campy seal, and with Campy lit in the box. I still have the installation guide. There was no sign of wear, so all told I think the cassette is new. I got the Veloce rear mech from Nashbar, I think it was in 2006.

My friend did not say they had different spacing, but different spacers, as your Campy chart shows. But the uniform 4.15 mm does say that all Campy 10 cassettes will interchange with each other, so the spacers and the ganged sprockets should not matter in my problem.

I'll give it a good clean up, then work on the cable tension again.

Road Fan

I don't think so. The local tech disassembled the cassette when he tried to fix it, but I watched him mike the spacers and assemble them in the correct order, according to the same Campy leaflet DaveSSS showed in this thread. Whatever my problem is I doubt its based on bad spacer selection or assembly. But I' will check them when I clean up.

operator

The first thing the OP needs to do is verify that

a) the wheel is sitting properly in the bike
b) the hanger is straight

99% of shifting problems is due to b), assuming the mechanic knows how to do a basic rear derailleur adjustment. The amount of bikes we service that come in for a tune up that feature hangers with >= 5mm hanger misalignment approaches 100%.

Road Fan

Hi, Operator, the wheel is true and dished. I checked the dish with a Minoura dishing indicator, after making sure it was true by spinning it and sighting on my brake shoes. I have horizontal dropouts with adjusters. Viewed from the rear I have the wheel in-plane with the frame both vertically and laterally, so I think the rear triangle and the wheel are aligned correctly.

I'm not sure if the derailleur hanger is straight. The rear derailleur is long cage, and sighted from the rear, the cage seems to be angled inward slightly. But I've always thought this was because of a slight cage bend, not a bent hanger.

Is there any chance that different grades of Campy rear derailleurs index differently with different grades of Campy 10 speed shifters, other than the single-shift issue introduced by having escape-type levers? I would not expect so, but ...

DaveSSS 

All Campy 10 RDs, regardless of model or cage length use the same cable pulls and move the same 4.15mm per shfit. You can mix and match a Record shifter with a Veloce long cage triple RD and it will work fine.

Road Fan

Thanks! So there's no chance I have any component incompatibilities. My problems are due component or frame condition or adjustment. The parts I've chosen should work together correctly.