My non-bike savvy friend (who lives a ways away) needs a new 7 speed rear derailleur because she cracked hers. I promised to try to help her out and find a new one pretty cheap (on ebay). However, I only have dealt with shimano stuff and my campy knowledge is seriously lacking, although this mini-project is teaching me a bit about the ways of campy.
What makes/models of campy rear derailleurs should I be hunting for? A lot of old campy ebay listings just say “nuovo record” or “grand sport” and don’t list how many gears they were designed for.
Could she just put on an 8 speed?
Any info would be appreciated
You can run 8 speed on nine speed derailleur. I had an 8 speed campy bike that I trashed the derailleur on and replaced with a new 9 speed. Worked fine. Pretty sure this won’t work all the way to 7 if you are dealing with index shifting. (Friction shouldn’t be a problem.)
I know when I upgrade from 8 to 9 speed, I had to get a new rear hub to fit the new cassette (ended up just getting a new wheel as it was cheaper.) Probably would have to do that in switching from 7 to 8 if you were going this route.
My nuovo record which was new in 1984-5 (or thereabouts) group has a 7-speed derailleur on my old Ciocc. I would think that either that or a “super record” derailleur from that same era would work. Super record was the top of the line back then, with nuovo record a notch below. Rough translation would be super record = dura ace and nuovo record = ultegra. As someone else mentioned, I would think you could use an 8-speed, but don’t know this for sure. There are quite a few of these on ebay, so you should be able to find something that will work. Good luck.
Mike
7 speed tells me that this bike has down tube shifters yes?
Correct, they are down tube shifters. I don’t know if they are indexed or not, but I think they are. If they are friction, then I’m assuming most anything will work, but if they are indexed, I want to make sure I get the right replacement part.
If they are friction, I can tell you Nuovo record SHOULD work fine. Mine does on 5, 6 and 7 speed. When 6-speed came along, they worked fine and the cogsets were wider than 5 speed. I have old DA 7-speed freewheels now on the same 6-speed frames, and I believe those cogs were narrowed and spaced into the same dimensions as the 6-speed standard cogset width.
When 8 speed came along, the rear triangle spacing of frames grew, and chains narrowed. The 7-speed DA works with the old chains but way way better on 8-speed chains.
I sincerely doubt that this bike has a cassette freehub, but likely a freewheel on 6-speed frame spacing. You will be hard pressed to find an 8-speed freewheel (they exist), and then to make a campy NR record work with indexing on an 8 speed shifter could be tough. I would start by replacing the upper jockey wheel with a modern one (that has side-to-side bearing play…this makes indexing probable/possibly at all). NR jockey wheels didn’t have this play, AFAIK, they were built for friction, at least the few that I have are that way. Maybe Campy upgraded them, but I THINK when indexing and Ergopower came along, they adopted new naming (record, Chorus, etc.)
I think she is stuck with 7-speed friction. Not bad, I still have it on a couple of bikes, including a TeamTT bike. Works great. Hope this helps.
Smelly.
First generation Campy Chorus derailleurs were 7 speed and are readily available on eBay.