Originally Posted by
Charles Wahl
Sutherland's lists the Mighty Competition as having almost the same length spindle for both Italian and English, 115 and 114 respectively. Makes sense: if both have the same OLD for rear dropouts, why would the chain want to be 1 mm farther from centerline? I'd even bet that Sugino actually only made one length spindle for these cranks -- have you ever measured several spindles that were supposed to be the same length? If they all fall within a mm, you're having a good day. What you want is a Sugino MW-70 spindle. I think that whoever put ISO into Velobase was incorrect -- Sugino/SunTour (and I think some years of Dura-Ace too) used Campy's pre-ISO taper, basically; because they were the big dog in racing equipment. Now that Campy has gone ISO (1992 or so), everyone thinks that those older spindles were ISO, but they were somewhat "stubbier."
There are cases where the same spindle or BB length is used for ISO and JIS BBs. For this to occur requires that the crank arms don't fit too close to the BB cup end in the Italian (longer) case. It won't always be true that you have to lengthen for Italian. Campy Record Triple (111mm assymmetrical) is one I've lately encountered.