Jquest

I'm putting together my fixie so I can use it to commute to work some days. I'm currently looking for a new crank. Will I have any problems picking up some cranks of fleabay? My raleigh BB is squared tapered. It had an old double ring crank with the label SR on the side. They were 170mm. I would assume since the bike is from England ...any cranks such as campys or suginos or any competition ones out there would fit fine as long as they are squared and tapered.

HillRider

Not all square tapers are exactly equal. There are ISO (Campy, some other European and a few Japanese ) and JIS (Shimano and most other Japanese) Since your cranks are SR I'll assume they are JIS which are very common and bottom brackets and cranks in this taper are widely available.

Further, by 1985 I believe Raleigh had changed to standard English threading which makes changing your bb even easier if that's what you wind up doing.

ISO and JIS tapers are different enough that interchanging them isn't a good idea. Often it works adequately but sometimes not so well. I'd stick to matching cranks and tapers. That disqualifies a Campy crank on your current bb. Stay with a JIS crank or change to an ISO bb if you want to use a Campy crank.

Jquest

Thank you for the response Hillrider. Though I might have the correct BB..it looks like I still need to change it. Looking around it looks like the J.I.S type BBs use 110mm from tip to tip of the taper. Looks like the BB I have go 123mm. Also measured the taper and it is about 20mm long. The cranks I took off were 23mm long. Just adding more info....

HillRider

The internal taper in the crank should be longer than the tapered portion of the spindle. The cranks should not bottom on the spindle and the extra length allows the fixing bolt to clamp the crank arms firmly in place without hitting the end of the spindle.

Jquest

Then should I just make sure I get J.I.S cranks and worry about the BB later if I have some type of issue whether fitting or alignment?

BTW....thank you for your time and patience with me. 8^)

HillRider

If everything is JIS, the only problem could be if your current bottom bracket spindle is the wrong length. If it's too short the chainrings might hit the chainstays and if it's too long, the chainline will be poor.