I recently did a Shimano/Campy blend on one of my personal bikes that I was selling to a friend on the condition that I could drop in a set of Centaur brifters onto a bike that had a 9-sp Dura Ace drivetrain and bar-end shift levers. Using a Shiftmate adapter, it turned out great, and he says that it shifts better than his other all-Campy bike.
There was, however, a moment of doubt when we first got everything hooked up and tried out the Centaur lever. Couldn't get more than 2 or 3 good cog jumps in a row before the shifting would start to fail to hit the mark. My friend had been super careful to source the proper model of the Shiftmate adapter, but the actual unit that he received had absolutely no markings to identify the model number. So, with two engineers standing there looking at a stalled-out experiment, I did what I was trained to do. I took off the Shiftmate, removed the little pulley, turned it around and put the pulley in backwards, reattached the Shiftmate unit, and ...... it worked perfect! It seems that a single pulley can produce two complimentary factors on either side of neutral, like multiplying cable pull by 0.95 or 1.05, depending on how it is positioned in the greater Shiftmate housing. It's likely that this was an assembly error at the factory, but putting an identifying mark on the critical component would help the QC function. So yeah, it all worked out great. But, if you have a problem, check that little pulley. Cheers, Tom Matchak Glen, NH On Friday, November 20, 2020 at 2:52:46 PM UTC-5 Damien wrote: > Hey all, hoping to tap your collective knowledge on this topic. I have a > pretty standard Albatross-Riv-Shimano set up on my Sam (Deore RD, Tiagra > FD, 11-36 9 speed cassette with Sugino triple up front, Microshift 9 speed > bar end shifters) and am *exploring *the idea of converting to drop bars > and using 9 speed Campagnolo Centaur shifters (since I love the way these > look and feel), potentially using a JTek Shiftmate 3. > > It sounds simple, but as with most things, I imagine it's not as simple as > it sounds. Before I start getting parts together for this mess, would love > to know if anyone feels strongly about this working well together, not > working well together, or if it's not worth the hassle and I just stick > with my Microshift bar ends on the drops. I figured that it would be nice > to keep the whole upright stem-handlebar-levers-shifters combo in tact if I > want to go back upright, and since I'm changing bar styles, why not > consider another option? > > Anyways, would love all of your thoughts on this, especially if you have > first-hand experience. Thank you all in advance! > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/32058599-29f9-4ff3-92c2-80ec27b07e07n%40googlegroups.com.
