Originally Posted by
francophile
Just to drill the point home, and maybe it's another reason to hate on French stuff for some people, I dunno. Check out the following cotters.
# 1 is the product Sunlite makes, I presume it's poured? Maybe it's ground and shuffled in a bin together to smooth it out. Dunno.
# 2 is the typical pinched-end cotter you get out of China.
# 3-5 are varying machined, pre-filed cotters.
I've typically found style of # 4 are a direct drop-in fit for me
on many cottered French bikes. Something like # 5 work a lot of times without filing anything too. Something like # 3, 2 or 1 will take filing every time, else the blunt end of the cotter is sticking out too far and I'm typically not getting seated very well. That's not to say the
angle is wrong, it could be 100% correct, I have a bag of those shown in # 3 and the angle is perfect, but there's too much material, and the cotter won't press in far enough for my taste.
Not sure this really helps at all, but ...
.
The pins I have are like
#1 and I believe they are Sunlite. Current production the cut is even shorter. I have cut some back to roughly your
#3 . Not even sure if they can be cut to look like 4. As in another reply as they get cut down the pin is starting to go all the way through the the crank arm.
The failed original pin, which did give a few thousand miles of service, was the same as what I am playing with.