FYI new Athena shifters $144 shipped... works perfect for 9spd Shimano drivetrains
 

Just saw these for a killer price, and I know that many here are creative with groupsets, and appreciate value. I've been running 11spd Campy shifters on a 9spd Shimano drivetrain for 20k miles, and it is a perfect match.

http://www.wiggle.com/campagnolo-ath...-alloy-levers/


http://www.wigglestatic.com/images/c...=350&h=350&a=7

Interesting! for the price of new Dura Ace bar-end shifters and NOS levers, you can buy brifters.

If anyone is interested in a modern "upgrade" on the cheap, I think the Campy shifters are the way to go. 10spd Veloce shifters will shift 8spd Shimano just right, but I see there was a recent price increase on those. Any Shimano derailleur that was made for indexing will work, except DA 7400.

EDIT: Price from your link says $173...

This is tempting. These will allow you to sift a Shimano 9sp rear derailer and Shimano 9sp cassette? Do you know if this would this work with a Shimano 9sp mountain bike derailer(Should be the same as road, I think.) like a Deore LX or XTR? I'm about to build a touring bike and would love to have brifters on it, even though everyone says to go bar-ends on a touring bike. I feel like brifters would be better for the ride in general, and I have bar-end shifters I could keep in the spare parts bag anyway. I hate the ugly Shimano brifters, and they aren't rebuild-able(I've read you can get spare parts if your Campagnolo brifters break.), so I was going to use bar-ends rather than brifters. This could change my touring bike plan... Please help with my uncertainty if you can - Will these work just as well with Shimano MTB derailer?

I'll be doing some research myself, but a definitive answer from someone who knows would be awesome if you're a someone who knows.

EDIT: Also, I see that some Athena shifters for sale specify that they are for a triple crank-set. The Wiggle ones don't specify. Are they all good with a triple or do you know if the Wiggle ones are?

Ribble has 10 speed double veloce brifters for just under $100 (pre ship). You can hub-bub any shimano RD and get a better 9 speed match than even the 11 speed brifters throw, which is also perfectly good. Just google "shimergo ctc" and you'll get to a link that has all the details.

I think you could outfit your touring rig with the just slightly more expensive triple veloce 10/3 brifters, but currently they are out of stock. I have the triple brifters working on a converted to drop bar mountain bike, and they have enough range to pull even the longer pull MTB top pull front derailleur. With a bottom pull road derailleur you'd have plenty of nice trim options across the three rings. Personally, I prefer brifters to bar ends. To me they offer better control when things get tricky, having your hands covering both the brakes and shifters at once.

^ Exactly my thought with the brifter rather than bar-end. And since I could just keep a spare bar-end with cable in my bag anyway(not a lot of weight), I could easily throw that on if something went wrong with the brifter. The hubbub thing is interesting. So you can get 10sp Campagnolo shifter and simply route the cable differently and they'll work perfectly with a Shimano 9sp derailer and cassette? I've been wanting to swap out my ugly Shimano brifters since I got them(Wouldn't have gotten them if not for a great deal on entire group-set...) and they won't work with a front bag for touring, so now is the perfect time. Thanks for the tip on the cable route trick.

All Campy left hand Ergos will shift either a double or triple. You are not dealing with Shimano here. OTOH, the Athena/Veloce shifters are Powershift, which function much like Shimano. Ultrashift suits my riding style better. YMMV.

The Athena 11sp group above would shift a triple on a touring bike? And it functions like Shimano in that it will up-shift 3 gears in a pull, but only down shift 1 gear at a time, right? It would be annoying trying to quickly click 9 gears individually as you're headed into a hill on a loaded touring bike.

It's the opposite on the rear. You can downshift three gears, and only upshift one. In practice, when giving a big input, it gets you either two or three, but I usually drop down one at a time anyway.

The front derailleur with Veloce brifters (what I know best), has about six/seven "larger" clicks going to the larger side of the chainring. There are only three "stop" positions going down (one for every other "larger" click, and not resettable other than by cable length). You need to be at least two clicks to the larger side, to hit a down position. That is, if you are one click "larger" than the closest down stop, and then choose to downshift the front brifter, it will bypass that closest stop and go to the next one (equal to three up clicks of movement). If you're two clicks "larger" than the closest down stop, and then downshift, it will stop at that closest stop (equal to two click of up movement).

So you have to think 2 to 1 when riding, and set up the larger chain ring such that you leave enough on the FD's upper limit screw to facilitate two "larger" stops on the big ring, plus the initial one, so three in total. Depending on your FD, that allows trim for the upper and lower portion of the rear cassette. Typically, once you find "good trim" (always a good thing) it will carry down to the middle ring. On the lowest ring, the FD's lower limit screw is the inner most trim setting. I guess reading all this, you need to experience it to make sense of all that, but that is how it works...

I agree that all campy brifters can shift a triple, but the specific triple designed ones (of the powershift variety) have a couple more clicks available than the doubles, this allows you to find "good trim" across all three rings. If your FD works across the whole cassette without any need for trim, than either the doubles or triples will do the job and have adequate stops.

OK, so you can shift down 3 more difficult gears at a time, but only up to one easier gear at a time? Like if all of the sudden I'm heading for a Really steep climb, I need to start clicking like crazy to get into my easy climbing gear? But if I'm about to head down that hill, I just need to do 3 multi-gear clicks and I'm in my most difficult gear, ready to bomb down a steep hill? That makes no sense to me, so hopefully I have this backwards...

Nope you can shift "down" to easier gears 3 at a time, and click "up" to a tougher gear one at a time.

Up and down get a little confusing as descriptions. So, the 3 at a time is to cassette gears with more teeth (easier).

Terminology seems to be getting confused.

"Down shifting" always means to a lower/easier/slower gear. "Up shifting" always refers to a higher/harder/faster gear. Just like a car.

People sometimes get confused when they look at the cassette and think that "down shifting" means shifting down the cassette to the smaller/more difficult sprockets, and upshifting refers to shifting upward on the cassette to the larger/easier sprockets.

Always think in the same terms of the terminology for car shifting and forget about the physical appearance of the cassette.

Yikes! Must have been a 1 day sale. $173 is a very "normal" price on these in the UK.

Yes. AFAIK all of the older Shimano MTB derailleurs (the new ones might be different), have the same throw as the road ones (excepting DA 7400).

I've used Campy 10spd shifters and hubbub on a 9spd Shimano drivetrain, and IME it wasn't quite perfect. Also hard to get the cable routed just right and cinched down. C11 shifters (Chorus) have been flawless... like they are made for each other.

Correct, and this is an important safety feature imo.

I had an Ergo shifter slightly overshift on me during a sprint upshift (to smaller cog), and the resulting slippage threw my foot off of the clipless pedal, nearly causing a crash and taking the leather off of my shoe's toe.

These newer Ergo shifters can't overshift in this manner, so are an improvement imo.