Originally Posted by
Grand Bois
They're cotter pins in the UK. In the US they're called cotters. I differentiates them from pins that keep nuts from loosening.
I've never tried to remove or install a cotter with anything but a press. It has always made the job simple and quick.
You have lived a charmed existence my friend. May it always be so!
In the early seventies I worked for a bike shop that rented hundreds of English 3-speeds to Stanford students. Only one in fifty or so cotters presented a removal problem, but the ones that did made up in aggravation for their small number. For many years afterwords I suffered Post Cotter Psychic Distress Syndrome. In fact, come to think of it, I haven't worked on a bike with cotters since then.
Brent