Sugino 75s are lovely, but they're approaching £200 once you add a new chainring and BB. BCD is 144 on the 75s and 130 on the RDs.
Anyway, the main problem was that the Sugino RDs come with a 103 bb. Almost all pista cranks I could find in London took a 107 or larger bb. The only pista cranks I've ever come across that take the 103 are the Sugino RDs (the 75s take a 109, FYI), and I think that's mainly because they're a repurposed road crankset that Sugino decided to rebadge as a cheap pista crankset - it comes with a 3/32 chainring, which is a bit of a giveaway.
Anyhoo, pretty much every shop I tried in London had sold out of the Messenger RD (which appears to be the only variant of the RD crankset you can get in the UK) so it was either order a matching set online with a 2-3 week wait and pray that the beercan shim doesn't fail (not cycling is not an option), or stump up for a whole new crankset. Oh, wait, that's not entirely true - there's a shop at the other side of the country that still has Sugino RDs in stock (rebranded as On-One), but they're 170mm, not 165mm, and I couldn't really justify buying the same ****ty crankset all over again if I couldn't use the current ones as spares. Plus I prefer 165mm for fixed - pedal strike is a *****. Ironically.
Given that the Sugino BB had been pissing me off for a while before I discovered the size problem, it wasn't so painful a decision.
And no, nobody was willing to sell me a single left arm that would fit. I did ask.
Last edited by h2o; 06-24-07 at 07:22 AM.