C&V bikes can have some pretty stuck fixed cups! Funny what 30 years of rust and neglect can do. The bike shop where I worked in the seventies had a great VAR tool for removing those super-stuck fixed cups. It clamped on to the cup nice and tight through the bottom bracket. I never met a cup it couldn't remove. But that tool and it's various imitators are all pretty expensive. Nowadays, without all the fancy shop tools, all I have is my trusty old fixed cup spanner that I've had since the seventies. It's a fine tool, but pretty darn thin, and the flats on the cups themselves are also quite thin. Any of you who have tried to remove a particularly tight fixed cup with one of these can testify to the fact that the spanner easily flies off the cup under force. If you escape this particular process without a couple of bloody knuckles you count yourself lucky. There must be some way to lock the wrench to the cup...

Here's my solution. A tip of the hat to Michael Angelo who posted something very similar to this a few months ago. Hopefully my pictures will make the operation of this kind of tool obvious.





The square washers, bolt, and nut hold the spanner tight on the flats of the cup so it can't fly off. Sometimes a few determined taps with a hammer on the arm of the spanner are required to get things started. Remember English fixed cups and some Swiss fixed cups are left-hand thread.



The parts (with the exception of the spanner) are all available at your local builder's hardware store or lumber yard.
1 fixed cup spanner (no it doesn't have to be a Campagnolo which are ridiculously overpriced nowdays.)
1 machine bolt 1/2" by 4" or 5".
1 nut for aforementioned bolt.
2 square foundation bolt washers with 1/2" holes.
1 1/2" round washer. The round washer isn't really necessary, just makes the nut a little easier to turn.

Brent