Originally Posted by
francophile
The Maillard hub needed just a slight fork spread (2mm-ish) to drop between the fork ends, so I'm guessing it's 93mm. The irritating part was the opening was only wide enough for the solid axle on the SA hub. I have a pair of suitable Atom hubs with solid axles, but I was hoping to avoid building another wheelset.
As mentioned before, I was stuck in French-land and in the process of "taking off" the fixed cup, I got another 3/4 turn tightened inward (using 24" Crescent, so lots of leverage applied). Curious how this was possible?
I've got a couple of 70mm cotterless axles in the bins, so I planned to tinker with this sooner than later just to see if I can find a combo that works and gives decent chainline using the stock cups, unless you've got other suggestions?
wrt fitting hollow axle wheels to frame ends intended only for solid axle:
the fastest & easiest manner to open them is with a die grinder. if one not available it can be done by hand with a file. a few minutes patient work will accomplish the task.
wrt to the machine's fixed bottom bracket cup:
as mentioned above the fixed side of the shell is counterbored to accept the unthreaded shoulder of the fixed cup. what was achieved with the large spanner was a slight enlargement of the counterboring in the manner of a trumpet bell.
wrt to reusing the cups with a cotterless spindle/chainset:
this is easily managed as pointed out by Ol Danl above with the use of a "Type II" asian spindle nr. 5S or 5N. nr 5N is nominally for single plateau gearing but yields a good chainline in this application.