The name stamped into the ends of the cartridge in SPIDEL not SPIRAL.

I was never interested in those bottom bracket cartridges because of the concerns listed above. Several other companies offered similar style cartridges that had tapers on the lock rings to center them in the bottom bracket. They were useful for bottom brackets with stripped threads.

A short history of Spidel that I wrote back in 2012:

Spidel was a marketing consortium/agreement between a number of French component manufacturers for their top of the line products. The main players were Stronglight, Simplex, Maillard/Atom and Mafac.

It was organized in in the late 70s in response to the lack of a complete component gruppos available from any of the French manufacturers. The Spidel organiztion lasted until the mid 80's when MTBs grabbed the bike market and those companies got left in the dust.

Shimano and later Suntour plus Campagnolo plus some of the other Italian component makers could offer bike manufactures a complete gruppo (group set) of matched components. That was a great marketing advantage in terms of product name recognition.

Spidel offered gruppos in name only. Bike manufactures still had to purchase the French components from the individual makers whereas they could place a single order with Shimano, Campy etc. and get a complete gruppo.

The other problem was that the companies selling under the Spidel name could never get it together to offer any kind of matching components like Campy and Shimano.

In the 80s Mavic sold gruppos for several years but then got out of the component business when new owners took over the company.

Some of the early Spidel components were still marked with Stronglight, Simplex, Mafac, Maillard and so on but came in Spidel boxes.

Eventually most of the components (cranks, headsets, hubs, brakes, derailleurs) on Spidel equipped bikes carried the Spidel marque but not always.

Spidel branded products:

Stronglight - Cranks, Headsets
Simplex - Derailleurs, Seatposts
Mafac - Brakes
Maillard/Atom - Hubs, Freewheels, Pedals and other items

Here's a Spidel "gruppo" from the early 1980s:



There were several other of these French marketing consortiums in the 70's: Frexa, Gefac and Sélection Tricolore Course (STC) for example. None were successful outside of France.

Frexa brands:

Huret
Maillard (also sold as part of the Spidel program)
Peyrard
Rigida
Poutrait-Morin
Jeunehomme

verktyg