I recently was given a couple very nice Stronglight steel cottered cranks. I was waiting for a project to use them on when I got my hands on a Gitane Interclub that was donated to the Bike Exchange. I thought it would be a nice upgrade to the Somewhat less well finished crank on the bike. After stripping the bike and regreasing the spindle bearings I went to install the crank arms only to find that they didn't fit, being a mil to large in diameter. Pulling out about a dozen old spindles I had in the shop I tried all of them on the Stronglight crank and they were all a hair too large for the Stronglight cranks. I then went in to the Bike Exchange and pulled out all the cottered spindles we had. I found at least 3 distinct diameters among them. Luckily I got 2 that fit the stronglight cranks. Most were larger and one was even smaller than the stronglight.

Does anyone have any further info on this topic. I also found 2 different spindle lengths in the pile with different offsets right and left. I had assumed that since all cottered cranks were for double chainrings and 120 mm dropouts they would all have the same profile.