Originally Posted by
verktyg
All of the crap about ISO, JIS, Campy, French, Japanese spindle tapers is just that!!! In the 1970's Phil Wood made "one size taper works with all" cartridges. They worked fine most of the time!
Except the one time I tried it.
1. Once a crank arm has been torqued onto the spindle, the soft aluminum alloy deforms to fit the spindle taper. More so with crank arms that have been removed and replaced a number of times. Factor in used cranks the have been run loose and that the magnifies the problem.
Tried that, failed that, with a square taper Athena on a Suntour BB.
Am somewhat in the same boat now with an Italian frame I want to run Suntour cranks on, which definitely will not work on an Athena BB.
Ordered a UN55 with Italian threading. We'll see how it works.
Just a note on the 5mm clearance. I am restoring a 1985 Raleigh, and simply pulled the R crank arm off. It will not go back on as close to the BB as it was before. I've filed any possible burrs inside the crank arm and on the spindle, and still, I'm about 2-3mm farther out than I want to be. I have no idea why.