Raleigh Dynatech 405ti Corsa; what to do?

averagebiker

Retro Guru
I picked this up last week and really want to ride it, but the rims are worn and I am no light weight so I don't want to risk it.

I will put a turbo trainer tyre on the back and do some indoor training in the meantime. I may eventually get new rims laced onto the hubs which are nice DT swiss jobs.

For now I have two donor bikes to get me riding it. They give me running gear choices (both with brifters) of either Shimano RSX 7x2 speed and Campagnolo Xenon 9x2 speed.

Which would you go for and why?
 

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I picked this up last week and really want to ride it, but the rims are worn and I am no light weight so I don't want to risk it.

I will put a turbo trainer tyre on the back and do some indoor training in the meantime. I may eventually get new rims laced onto the hubs which are nice DT swiss jobs.

For now I have two donor bikes to get me riding it. They give me running gear choices (both with brifters) of either Shimano RSX 7x2 speed and Campagnolo Xenon 9x2 speed.

Which would you go for and why?
Is the current set up 7 speed? Just thinking that if so the rear spacing won’t allow for 9 speed.
 
It has nine speed on it currently. All three appear to have an OLD of 130mm at the back so the Shimano 7 speed should work too?

Having said that my current favourite option is the Campagnolo Xenon!
 
I think 9 speed campy and shimano cassettes have the same dimensions, so maybe you could fix it with only a wheel change? I have used campy brifters and derailleurs for a while with a shimano cassette and it worked perfectly.
 
I had 9 speed Xenon on a winter bike a while back, and although it worked well enough, I did have two shifters break in fairly quick succession - the plastic levers broke off in both cases. I would say that being the budget end of Campagnolos range, that groupset is not really up to the quality you might expect - well, in my experience, anyway.

Having said that, RSX is also of course the lower end for a road group, but maybe a bit more solidly built.

I’m not sure if that’s really very useful! What I would say is that if both donor bikes are still complete you should do a quick test of the shifting before stripping the parts. The RSX shifters do tend to get sticky/gummed up over time, for example - which is solvable, but will be more obvious when actually on the bike.
 
I think 9 speed campy and shimano cassettes have the same dimensions, so maybe you could fix it with only a wheel change? I have used campy brifters and derailleurs for a while with a shimano cassette and it worked perfectly.
That is likely to be my first attempt as ideally I would like to keep it original (apart from new rims) so would be the quickest work around whilst I get the wheels sorted. I will also test my flexibility to be able use downtube shifters lol
 
I had 9 speed Xenon on a winter bike a while back, and although it worked well enough, I did have two shifters break in fairly quick succession - the plastic levers broke off in both cases. I would say that being the budget end of Campagnolos range, that groupset is not really up to the quality you might expect - well, in my experience, anyway.

Having said that, RSX is also of course the lower end for a road group, but maybe a bit more solidly built.

I’m not sure if that’s really very useful! What I would say is that if both donor bikes are still complete you should do a quick test of the shifting before stripping the parts. The RSX shifters do tend to get sticky/gummed up over time, for example - which is solvable, but will be more obvious when actually on the bike.
Thanks. I know they are not top of the range but both should do a job for a while.
 
Thanks. I know they are not top of the range but both should do a job for a while.
Sure - I wasn’t meaning to be sniffy about either of those groups, by the way, so I hope it didn’t seem that way. RSX is very decent for what it is, really. I just remember being a bit disappointed with the build quality of Xenon.
 
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