mnmkpedals 

I got this unbranded crankset from a friend with a bunch of other stuff and trying to id it to figure out spindle length, and generally, just to know what it is. Usually, they seem to be blazoned everywhere with brands, so I am not thinking it's anything special, but curious.

It came off a bike with a Campy bottom bracket (friend sold bike with BB, so no spindle length there to go on), and it had omega dust caps on it when I got it. Also had sugino Aero Mighty rings on it. A franken-crank. Anyway, I have surfed pics, and can't seem to match it with anything I can find. Only distinctive feature is the edge bevel on the five sides of the star. Only writing on reverse is the 170 measurement with "Road" and pedal size.

Look familiar to anyone?

noglider 

My guess is Ofmega.

mnmkpedals 

yeas, closest I came by eyeball was to the Ofmega CX:

VeloBase.com - Component: Ofmega CX

but I was guessing without similar loud-n-proud branding, it might be some competitor's knock-off? Especially since that set is engraved, so couldn't have been rubbed off.

Seems similar to their SC set by profile, but those lack the edge details
VeloBase.com - Component: Ofmega CX

JohnDThompson 

Those are most likely made by Ofmega, which also made Avocet's cranks:

noglider 

Ofmega did a lot of OEMing, so not seeing their name doesn't seem strange, but the nameless crank is a little strange.

zukahn1 

That would make sense I have seen a lot of there stuff with minimal markings and just various brand decals.

dddd

I have an Ofmega crank that's styled to look like a C-Record crank.

Has Ofmega caps, and the arms are silkscreened Colnago.

Same bike had hourglass shaped hubs, again with Colnago script but poorly finished.

I bought the bike (after someone front-ended it) for $80, then sold the badly-bent frame on Ebay for $88. I kept the parts, and btw the front wheel survived the crash fine, so maybe it was a roof-rack vs. garage-door incident(?). The bike's MA2-looking Italian rims, alone, made this one a good deal.

Bianchigirll 

I agree with the Ofmega and it is always some one polished any name off of it, or just rubbed off.

The real problem is finding a BB. Check Sheldon's site on BBs but you likely won't find a ofmega and you'll have to longer or is shorter???

JohnDThompson 

My experience is that not all Ofmega-made cranks follow the weird Ofmega pattern. Later production Avocet certainly didn't.


Source: Sutherland's 4th Edition

RobbieTunes

I agree with Ofmega as #1 choice, then Miche.

I've seen both come with Campy groups, most notably on Bianchi Trofeo's from the late 90's.
The Miche was painted, including the logo, so removing the paint would remove the branding.

The radial shaping is similar to Ofmega.

dddd

I expect Ofmega cranks to usually fit on ISO spindle ends with no bottoming of the bolt on the end of the spindle, so no problems.

But I recommend keeping a couple of Shimano cartridge bottom brackets around for test-fit purposes, as a test-fit is very informative in directing one toward a correct spindle length.

The test bb can be a crunchy discarded one even, so I have a collection of Shimano bb's that includes a couple of sizes which aren't usable for more than relatively short-term use because of their bearing's condition, but which often can substitute fit-wise for even an ISO-spec crankset as I have done a few times and used for hard riding.

Again, just doing a test-fit with whatever bottom bracket(s) are handy is better than guessing and for me has actually worked much better than relying on published data.

And when it comes time to compare spindle tapers, without having to install and torque every one of them, the measurement method pictured below gives a precise numerical comparison that might save some time.
It measures the taper at a consistent distance from the end of the spindle, equal to the caliper jaw's thickness.
Note that the range of different brand's taper measurements as shown will tend to fall within just a couple of tenths of a millimeter of variation, which translates to just 2-3mm of difference in insertion depth, and thus affects the overall "effective" spindle length (as installed) by 5-6mm, which can be significant.
Spindle shown is JIS, measuring 12.9mm using this instrument, but an ISO spindle would here read about 12.7mm, and I haven't seen any much smaller than that.
That's a $20 caliper btw, but gives highly repeatable measurements and thus is more than precise enough for making comparisons between whatever spindles one has at hand.

From there, one will likely also want to measure and compare how far the driveside spindle ends of different bottom brackets protrude beyond the cup flange seating surface (which is particularly easy to do when dealing with Shimano cartridge bottom brackets, most of which have integral body, spindle and driveside cup).

Also, for direct, measurable comparison of spindle-end insertion depths, one can even use the jaws of an adjustable wrench that has the adjuster wheel locked in place, perhaps with a Vice, Vise-Grip, or even by LocTite-ing the adjuster wheel (since such wrenches can often be had for free, or for a couple of dollars at garage sales and flea markets).

Ofmega cranks can be failure prone, so perhaps not the best choice for hard use by strong and/or heavier riders.

And it recently occurred to me that Shimano never made or supplied any bb spindles or cartridges with the cheap, "nutted" threaded stud end attachment, which says a lot about their conscientious approach to reliability imo.