Originally Posted by
DannoXYZ
That's bizarre! I've seen this a couple of times, English threading on a 70mm wide BB. Definitely takes English threaded cups. I ended up mixing and matching two different ball & cup BBs. Use an English one for the cups and take the "5" spindle from an Italian BB.
If you are looking to order a cartridge BB, an English BB may work on 70mm shell. There's typically about 2mm of gap & exposed threads on the left-side plastic cup anyway. So you'll just screw it in a little further. And most bikes of that vintage have asymmetrical spindle with a longer right-side anyway. So this 70mm with 2mm right-side offset may end up matching the original more closely than if you had a 68mm BB shell.
so I should get a 73mm or a 68mm for the 70mm shell. I would think that 68 would be too small because the left side cup would have to be screwed in 2mm more than usual. So a 73mm would have about 3mm exposed on the left. Or I could put a BB cup spacer on the right fixed side to even it out a bit. right????