Here's a quick one, i have campag chorus hubs with a suntour 7 speed cassette on one bike, which has a ye olde shimano 600 friction-shifting arabesque RD, and ritchey hubs with a shimano 7 speed cassette on the other bike, which has an indexed 600/Ultegra RD.

I'm at work, and looking for something other than work to think about!

Any guesses as to whether i could do a straight wheel swap if i fancied doing a wheel swap? the campag wheels have new rubber, the ritchies not so much, and i'm looking at a way to avoid buying new tyres right now.

i'm sure i'll be able to tell at a glance tonight, but just wondering if there are common pitfalls, or annoying glitches with ths sort of plan?

cheers all.

Your 600 Ultegra RD will not index with a Suntour freewheel. If that works with you, you can swap them. The 600EX will work fine with the cassette. I assume that both hubs are 126mm. If I were you, I'd swap tires

yeah, fair call. i think that might be the best option here!

the 7spd Ultegra is indexing? so it has DT shifters you can switch to friction right? if the wheels are spaced the same you should be able to swap them around. I used to try and keep all my wheels spaced the same for just that reason.

Hey Bianchigirll, the gios has 600/ultegra with shifting on the levers one click up, one click down (that is indexed yah?) etc, and the carlton raleigh has DT friction shifters. the gios has old worn tyres, the raleigh has nice near new ones! i just kinda imagined if the alignment of the cogs were the same, then maybe it'd just be a simple swap. most likely i'll just switch tyres like EjustE suggested, but i'm kinda keen to see the dark grey campag rims on the gios. it really isn't a big deal either way, i'm just at a 'one treat every couple of months' sort of stage, and i still need clip in shoes to even ride the gios. so they're next, and that means tyres are a wee way off!

Ok... sounds like you got tricolor (Shimano 600 Ultegra) STIs (brifters) then... not even need to dream about getting a Suntour freewheel work with them If you really want those Campy rims on the bike, you might want to think about having them laced on the existing hubs on the Gios and swap rims with the Raleigh... A tad pricey, but...

Also it sounds like your Gios has 130mm (or 128 mm) rear spacing it, which will make the wheel swap kind of futile.

shattered dreams... not to worry. there's nothing wrong with either set-up, so i guess it's time to swap the tyres! thanks for the input anyways. there was a thread on here about newer wheels on older frames and someone had dark rims on a GIOS that looked very very nice. however, the numerous hurdles you've pointed out make me think i'll just leave that idea for now.

As an aside, the RD on the GIOS is also an 8 speed apparently (i'm really not that clued up on the modern stuff, this bike is only about 10 years old!), and it's got 7 on it at the mo', so maybe i'll look at stepping up to 8 speed. modern! but you refer to it as tricolor? it does have that natty little sticker on the RD with three colours, i forget what colours exactly, but was that some particluar period of 600/ultegra/whatever?

cheers,

andy

That was somewhat of a schizophrenic period of Shimano and one that produced probably one of its best performing groups that was/is compatible with (mostly other than DA 74xx) everything else Shimano (which is what you have) : the (official name) 600EX Ultegra 64xx series. It started its life around '88/'89 as a 7sp group (funny enough) priced less than the Sante group. It was replaced in the mid 90s, and someplace down the road, it lost the 600 designation and before that it lost the EX designation. The STIs (which are 8sp and all 64xx can handle 8 speeds) were of the just Ultegra period. 7sp to 8sp in road bikes was a big change: it meant cassettes and freehubs and not freewheels and hubs and 130mm and not 126mm rear spacing. So the late 80s and early 90s were very turbulent about that and companies, used to space their frames at the in-between 128mm point, which could deal with both choices. The 'tricolor' reference has to do with the green, blue and purple color rectangle on these components.

Really need some pictures of that Gios methins

Hey EjustE, it's lurking over in this thread, along with my '81 Raleigh: https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...s-enough-right

The campag wheels on the Raleigh were a compromise at first, as they replaced silver rims, but i've grown to love them.