Originally Posted by
Bill Kapaun
It sounds like your cups are swapped. That would make it a pain to adjust with the chain rings in place.
OTOH, I've heard of people using adjustable cups on both sides to fine tune a chain line. I imagine that is getting harder to do, considering the scarcity/expense of parts.
I believe Motobecane was one of the first French companies to shift over to "Swiss" threads. Same 35 x 1 mm. threading as French, but the the drive side is threaded just like British fixed cups (= tightens turning counter-clockwise). Reversing fixed and adjustable cups on French threaded bikes was one of the sometimes oddly convenient quirks about French bikes.
The practicality of having adjustable cups on BOTH sides, possible with French cups, in some ways carried over to Phil Woods and eventually to many other cartridge BB sets during the 1990s. Companies such as
Synchros...
World Class...and
Race Face quickly come to mind. This was possible since the entire cartridge barrels AND their lock rings
- all fitted within the BB shell of the frame and could simply be shifted slightly to the right or left. Unlike the Phil lock rings, the threads of some just wrapped around the cartridge units (just like Campy and Shimano)... but, unlike Shimano & Campy they had no outer flanges to limit the movement of the drive side cup.
Unfortunately, these seem to have disappeared these days, along with the vanishing of the traditional square tapered spindle.
Pretty slick and even rather reasonably priced - considering the overall quality... while the market had still made them marketable.
As for the loose crank arm...
You may be able to snug it up with new cotter pins. Be advised that there were indeed two common sized pins used. For British pedal threaded crank arms 9.5 mm was common... for French diameter crank arms, smaller pin openings for 9.0 mm pins was standard. Unfortunately nothing is that simple.
Nervar is one company which comes to mind. By the 1970s they made cottered cranks for: ...
1.) British cotter pins + spindles & British pedals...
2.) French cotter pins + spindles and French pedals...
3.)
Combinations of French cotter pins + spindles with British pedal threads.
Best to go to a competent local bike shop and have them measure the crank arm openings for the proper diameter pins. New replacement cotter pins are still available and may cost as little as $1 each - complete with new nuts and washers.
If you use too small a size they might "
seem" to fit - at first, but could tend to slide too far down into the crank arm when fully tightened. Pins which are too large would be pretty obvious - since they would simply not fit into the crank arm bore at all.