Cable outers for Campagnolo

[DTD]

Hello and thank you for the help in choosing a Campagnolo Veloce Triple groupset for a bike I'm having built for my 50th next Spring.For reasons best known to myself I'd like silver braided cable outers instead of the plastic ones supplied by Campagnolo and ordered some Jagwire from Wiggle, only to realise that it was only suitable for Shimano/SRAM (and Wiggle to tell me it would void Campagnolo's guarantee (not sure if that's much of a concern).Anyway, my question for the panel is, could I get some outers like this and would it work? If so, what diameter, length, type should I be getting?Thank you once again in anticipation of your help.

 

[boydj]

Seems to me the important bits are the inner cables. With the outers you need to ensure a tight fit into all the cable stops, particularly at the shifters. I have the same shifters on one of my bikes, with Campag compatible Jagwire Racer cables. They work fine, but you do need to get the Campag-compatible kit. If Wiggle can't swap the kit, then new inners should do the trick as the outers are a standard 4mm for gear and 5mm for brake cables. Possibly only gear inners required.

 

[PpPete]

You definitely need Campag specific compatible inners. Both brakes & gears have subtly different nipples on the ends to the more common Shimano - style However the very expensive Campag outers are not worth the money IMO. The longitudinal wires on the gear outer go rusty very quickly and are very prone to fraying. I've been trying Goodridge cable which has an additional layer of re-inforcng braiding, and the performance is excellent, but you need to pay close attention to lengths because it's a whole lot stiffer than regular compressionless outer and so you sometimes need longer outer to allow for greater bend radii.
I've also used Jagwire outer on another build, but it's too recent to comment on its performance over time.

 

[DTD]

Sorry, I should have made clearer – the groupset comes with the inners, (and outers, though these are separate) so can I just change the outers? If I've understood boydj correctly I just need to find some 4mm gear and 5mm brake outers I like the look of?

 

[accountantpete]

I'm not sure what the problem is here - so I'm probably missing something obvious!

The "problem" is that some cables will not mate perfectly at two spots - the rear mech and the shifters. And this is where the outer diameter of the cable is important.

BUT -

Campagnolo used to have 9/10 spd 4.5 ego cable for gears. They then also used a ferrule on top of the cable to get a nice tight fit in the shifter.

However they then changed their cabling to ULTRA LOW FRICTION. The ferrule is effectively in the shifter and they now use 4mm cable direct (with no ferrule).

The 4mm ULF cable is exactly the same as my Shimano Ultegra grey cable and that Racer cable you are interested in.

Now there may be a slight bit of bodging to do re the rear mech and am not sure re brake cables but I reckon the Racer gear cable (without ferrule) will work.

 

[DTD]

The LBS will be doing the bodging – but don't carry the racer cable – Hmmmm – the problems of liking a bit of bling! ;-)