Mixing Shimano and Campy 11s

[coelacant]

I tried to mate Pontenza shifters with Shimano 6800 derailleurs, 6800 cassette and chain. The rear shifts ok. the front-crap. There's 4 cliks with the Potenza front shifter but no real trim modes, just up or down.
Should I try a pontenza front derailleur instead? Shimano 6800 front works fine with Shimano shifters if you set it up right, but doesn't look like it wants to here.
Help me out you mix n match experts.

TIA,
C

[jtakeda]

From my understanding you want Campagnolo Shifters, rear der and front der.

The crank, chain and cassette are all cross compatible but not the mechs themselves

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by coelacant

I tried to mate Pontenza shifters with Shimano 6800 derailleurs, 6800 cassette and chain. The rear shifts ok. the front-crap. There's 4 cliks with the Potenza front shifter but no real trim modes, just up or down.
Should I try a pontenza front derailleur instead? Shimano 6800 front works fine with Shimano shifters if you set it up right, but doesn't look like it wants to here.
Help me out you mix n match experts.

TIA,
C

Match shifter 'brand' to der 'brand'..kinda basic.

[chiasticon]

yeah in general, keep shifters and derailleurs the same. some have reported success with 10 speed Campy and Shimano/Sram derailleurs (I have a friend that raced a cobbled-together-from-old-parts crit bike like that for years), but I've never heard of 11 speed working OK. the rest of the drivetrain, use whatever.

[oldpotatoe]

The rear shifts ok. the front-crap

When I was in the trenches at Morgul-Bismark in the early 90s, I had a gent come in with Campagnolo 8s shifters and a XTR rear der..he said 'it shifted OK'...in the stand it really didn't shift at all, not even close so

Match shifter to ders, brand-wise..and go ride.

[dddd]

I have to admit that I never even thought of using any version of 11s Campag shifters with a Shimano 11s rear derailer, but it's amazing to hear that it is said to work ok.
The Campag 11's shifter is said to pull just slightly less cable than a Shimano 11s road shifter would, so perhaps something that can be tweaked at the cable pinch bolt(?).

Certainly there is a huge price difference between Shimano and Campagnolo derailers, especially since the Shimano units are so more widely available used or as leftover stock.

I've used Ergo-10s levers with 8s Shimano derailers and was able to easily get everything working to what I would call racing standards. Sometimes just a tweak of a couple of cog spacers makes the difference, but I haven't done any mixing with 11s stuff other than with switching pre- and post-2015 Campag rear derailers.

[slambers3]

I'd be curious to see what is meant by "shifts ok..."

Shifts ok, like "goes through all of the gears in the stand with a little bit of noise" or "i can trust to to up/downshift reliably under load in a race situation"

[coelacant]

I said ok meaning it shifts fine, no skipping on any gear, I don't notice it being any noisier than an all Shimano set up. Leonard Zinn wasn't totally wrong when he said on VN that you can mix and match 11s drivetrains. I now think the problem lies with the 6800 front derailleur, It's always been finicky to set up to start with. So before dropping some coins for a Potenza front, I'm just going to use an old Centaur I have to see if it solves the problem.

[coelacant]

I take it back, when riding steep hills, it seems to skip at the low end, ughh.
Looks like I'll need to get the Pontenza derailleurs now..

[Dave]

Here's a link to a cable pull discussion. Shimano shifters have always pulled less cable than Campy shifters, so you should never expect either one to work with the opposite brand of RD.

I just recently built a precision device for measuring cable pull. Campy 11 pulls substantially for more cable than Shimano 11, if the results from other testers are accurate. There are also two versions - the 2009-2014 and the 2015+. The 2015+ pulls more cable than the early model.

This link has a lot of bad info, along with some good.

https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...able-pull.html