ign1te

Never seen something like this before. Anyone familiar with it?

FBinNY 

Vaguely. I temember these as coming on relatively low end bikes from Germany, or elsewhere in northern Europe, in the late sixties and seventies. I sort of recall that it was something with an "H", like Heinemann or similar.

I hope that helps.

As I said, it's been a long while, but if you don't have the crank, I suspect that you won't find one easily.

Iride01 

There is a BB spindle on eBay with hexagonal ends Don't think it's quite the same as yours. But you might finds some hints in it's description to get you started googling for more info.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284486113024

. However I wouldn't have any issue tossing that one in your bike and putting something more normal in it. Assuming the BB shell matches some standard in common use today. If not, I'd toss the bike to the recycling scrap yard too.

Mad Honk 

Toss out a bike that has hair growing out of it's joints? Pretty unusual phenomenon I think. Smiles, MH

dedhed

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184865893648

Andrew R Stewart 

I, too, have seen this type of crank/axle fitting. And like Francis I can't remember the brand or model names (although seem to think it was on a BMX/Freestyle bike) and agree with the speculation of not finding a replacement. If you pull the BB there might be some info marked on it. Andy

ign1te

Apparently suntour made a hexagonal one called Hexon.

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/SR-Suntou.../dp/B002NN7JVU

veganbikes

Fixed that for you!

SR and actual Suntour are different companies, let's not get them confused. Maeda Industries went out of business and SR bought out the name.
SunXCD was founded by the former President of SunTour so it really has the lineage from SunTour

MudPie

Odd, the photo shows a hex drive with the appropriate name "Hexon", yet the product description says ISIS. ISIS is a splined interface, not a hex.
So not sure what is going with the conflicting info.

HillRider

You have to be careful with Amazon's descriptions of a lot of products. Many are improperly described and you have to know exactly what you are looking for. Bicycle components seem particularly prone to incorrect descriptions.

Hondo6

Um, no. SR never owned SunTour.

According to Frank Berto (see his "Sunset for Suntour" article), SR was bought out by Mori Industries (a Japanese steel tubing company) in 1989. In 1990, Mori bought out Madea SunTour, combining the two entities shortly thereafter. The resulting company was called SR SunTour (likely to make use of both SR's and SunTour's name recognition).

The bottom bracket under discussion in the Amazon link above was apparently made after Mori combined SR and SunTour. Given SunTour's extensive expertise with bottom brackets, I'd guess it was made by the old SunTour division - but that's only a guess.

veganbikes

Ok yes, technically Mori bought SR and then bought the name of actual SunTour. The bottom bracket from that link is pretty new with the SR ST logo. Maybe not current new but not old enough to be actual SunTour.

ign1te

That document was a nice read. Thank you for that.

Hondo6

Mori far bought more than the SunTour name in 1990 - they bought SunTour's operations and facilities from Madea Industries, essentially by assuming SunTour's debts. Mori continued to produce both SR and SunTour products under the SR Suntour name for several years before deciding to get out of the bicycle components business entirely in early 1995. At that point, two of SR's former owners arranged a management buy-out of SR's operations and the SunTour name and the SunTour production facility in Taiwan from Mori and contined operations as SR SunTour.

Unfortunately, the new SR SunTour management team either chose not to purchase (or were perhaps unable to purchase) SunTour's intellectual property, other facilities, and other tooling as part of the 1995 buy-out. Berto says Mori sold SunTour's remaining tooling for scrap (which included the tooling for the Superbe groupset) and sold the rest of SunTour's remaining facilities individually. He doesn't say what happened to the IP rights.

I did some further checking, and it appears that SR SunTour produced products using the Hexon crank interface as late as the early 2010s. (Unfortunately, I've been unable to determine when it first appeared.) Based on that fact, I'd guess you're probably correct in thinking it was developed after the 1995 management-buy-out vice something developed by the old Madea SunTour development team.

Hondo6

You're most welcome. I especially enjoyed the late Paul Brodek's insider commentary at the end of that version of the article.

Got a copy of the latest edition of Berto's The Dancing Chain as a Christmas present. If the book is anywhere near as good as his "Sunset for Suntour" article, IMO it's worth every penny it might cost.

ign1te

In general it seems like a strange move to go for a hexagonal axle like that. Only works with 6-sided cranks and square axles have been the norm for 100 years or so.

Iride01 

6 corners will be harder to shear off than 4 corners.

ign1te

When was the last time some one sheared off a crank or an axle like that?

Iride01 

Don't know. Of course it's rare. Crank arms are built to take the forces expected to be put on them.

But you'd mused earlier and thought it strange......I was just telling you why they might have tried it. Spreading the load around the hole in the crank arm potentially allows other potential benefits of design and maybe weight savings. And IMO for the last 50 of those 100 years, square taper cranks are mainly found on low tier bikes. So I wouldn't consider them the norm.

The fact they didn't catch on shows that other designs for the spindle and crank arm interface were better than just the hexagonal. ISIS and Octalink being very common today.