I know, the shame of it. Never before have I owned a bike with Campag.

I’ve bought a v well priced Uncle John from a friend. He built it for commuting and light touring, I’m going to race* CX on it.

It’s all 10sp Campag – Veloce and Centaur. Chainset is a Centaur compact (34/50). I want more suitable gearing – I was thinking of the classic 36/46.

Some googling tells me that Centaur compact won’t take a big ring smaller than 48 due to the one weird 112BCD bolt. And because of this 112BCD thing, I’m limited to Campag compatible chainrings.

The weird world of Campag has now given me the fear – if I buy another (non Campag) chainset will I run into any other compatibility issues?

Help..!

*if you call the sort of poorly co-ordinated wheezing I do “racing”….

campag are much stricter on max/min gear capacity when it comes to mechs.

best to check exactly which mechs you have and have a furtle about on the web for gear capacities

Oh. OK. So, this may now impact on the front mech? No wonder I normally ride Shimano….

your front mech will be fine, any 10speed road chainset will be fine. I run record 10 on one CX bike, veloce on the other with FSA chainsets and normal (ie not compact) front mechs and it’s all gravy.

leggyblonde – sort of had that realisation – frotn mechs only have an issue on max capacities. Since, say, 36/46 is only a capacity of 10, the current mech (which must have at least 16 caopacity for 34/50) will be fine.

So, and specific recommendations for chainset or chainrings (if I get something s/h and fettle it)?

personally, I’d up the smaller chainring to 36 and see how I got on – a whole new crankset for the sake of two teeth seems quite extravagant – you could use a different ratio rear mech to give the ratios you want?

wwaswas – fair point. I suspect I won’t trouble the big ring much, whatever size it is.

Maybe I’m over-thinking this one….

budget? chainrings aren’t cheap so I would recommend a cross specific chainset from FSA, raceface or campag if you can afford it.

Or go singlering

Prob cheap budget – bike cost me £250 (not bad considering it’s only 9 months old and pristine), and I want to keep costs sensible.

Was thinking of FSA or similar – Campag cross specific chainset is c£140, which seems a bit disproportionate given the cost of the ehole bike….

Singlering may prove useful, but I’ll see how my first full season goes before getting “specialist” – previous CX has been done on my MTB or this at HTN: