Campagnolo 8/9 speed. Help wanted!

Hello,

I'm building up a 1994 Francesco Moser Leader Ax and deep down the vintage Campagnolo groupset rabbit hole (and beginning to wish I'd gone the neo-retro route!)

I bought an 8 speed chorus groupset that I'm happy with and was going to use, but then saw a great deal on some vintage 9-Speed Ventos which I bought. So now I need to update to a 9 speed groupset.

In terms of the gearing us there anything I can keep from my 8-speed group? I'm sure the ergos will have to be changed but could I keep either of the derailers and are the cranks/chainrings compatible?

I'm happy to buy the right parts but just want to make sure I buy the right ones!

Any advise would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Sam

Hi,
you could try bodging up an 8sp cassette for that freehub.
Pulled this from Branford bike

Original 9 speed Campagnolo freehub. <...>
May be retrograded for use with 8 speed drivetrains by employing a Campagnolo 9 speed loose cog cassette, dropping a cog and adding Wheels Mfg Shift-8 spacers.

Conversion cassettes may have also been made.

As for your actual question:
I'm pretty sure to run a 9sp cassette you'd just have to change the ergo gear insert to 9sp.
That particular insert is quite rare, so you might be better off getting a pair of <2001 ergos.
Hope this helps.

It’s weird that 8spd Chorus is an issue on 9spd wheels? I’m running 8spd Chorus on 11spd Zonda’s, the only thing I had to source was the correct lockring, no need for spacers.

It'll be fine. 8, 9 and 10sp freehub carriers are the same. Your '9 sp' Ventos will take any cassette of those three.

I don't think so, Campag went through 5 freehub designs in the 90s.

I stand (sit) corrected. I guess I was talking from the shimano perspective. The width of the carriers, the width of the cassttes overall is the same 8,9, 10. If the splines on the carriers changed in Campag world then it just shows how annoying campag really is.

But the solution is there I think. Buy the right 9sp cassette for the hub, lose one of the loose cogs and change the spacers.

If I were the OP I would wait for some 8sp chorus wheels to come up.

The length of these bodies remains the same. So an 8sp carrier could perhaps be put onto a 9sp hub, but this stuff is (evidently) not my strong suit.

Is that right? I can only assume then that the previous owner of my eight speed cassette must have done the nine speed, drop the large cog, fit different spacers trick.

Coincidently, was just about to replace the cassette. Does anyone know which nine speed cassettes had separate cogs all the way through the cassette?

9sp UD Veloce is loose cog and afaik the only option you can still buy new.

Hi all, thanks for comments. I figured that it is much harder to find the the wheels to match the groupset rather than vice-versa, so am going to replace the 8 speed with a 9 speed gruppo...

I'm learning a lot about the idiosyncrasies of vintage Campy groupsets!

Thanks

Sam

I thought I’d chime in as I did exactly the same thing but in reverse (1995 8-Speed Shamal’s with my other wheels having Daytona hubs) whilst running an 8-Speed groupset.

I ran a Veloce 9-Speed cassette and just lost one of the cogs and used the 8-Speed spacers out of the original cassette that was on the Shamal’s. The difference in cog thickness was so minimal that the shifting worked perfect and was still silent. The final cog had slightly less spacing as the spacer is built onto the cog, but I just ran the limit screw with a slight bias towards the outside rather than perfectly in line and that worked perfectly.

I converted to 11-Speed last year as I wanted to get a greater range of ratios rather than having to choose between grinding up hills or ‘doing a Froome’ on anything greater than -1% and I’m so happy I did. The 1995 Shamal’s have been converted with an old Veloce 9-Speed freehub which fits the older 12mm axles perfectly (the hub was about £45 on the Bay) so I now have modern capability on what I reckon are the prettiest hubs Campag ever did.

As far as converting the older shifters to or from 8 and 9-Speed it can be done without too much swearing (I converted some 1999 9-Speed levers to 8-Speed to get a newer more ergonomic shape whilst still maintaining compatibility with the 8-Speed groupset). Campag do the full range of spare parts catalogues on their websites which shows the exploded diagrams and all the parts. Just make sure if you do decide to get a pair of shifters to cannibalise you don’t mix the internal types. Quick Shift used an escapement mechanism which isn’t compatible with the internals of the older types of levers.

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