Hey fellow C&V'ers,

The question that is somehow older than time itself - which route to take when converting a Nottingham Raleigh to cotterless cranks?

Yes, this topic has been beat to death over many decades. The bike is a common Sports which I want to convert to a Clubman for more spirited riding. I know that the original cranks are totally fine when paired with good quality pins, but I'm anywhere from 220-240lbs depending on what I had for lunch. I'd like to convert it over for peace of mind when putting the power down, especially out of the saddle. I plan on using one of those retro-looking track cranks they have around these days.

15 year old me converted a Record to cotterless with nothing but a different spindle and a good helping of loc-tite. No lockring! I don't remember it not working.. but these days I have a little bit of expendable income and don't mind buying parts every now and then. Especially if they'll prevent me from being stranded on the side of the road.

I really can't decide how I'd like to do it, all the options have pros and cons. Personally I'm leaning towards the Velo-Orange threadless option (the nuclear option) as long as my BB is a 71. I haven't measured it yet - which I know is the first step. Hah!

What would you do?

I'm similar in weight and never have cotter issues but I've always had access to good ones and I have a cotter pin press. Get some good cotters from Bikesmith and buy a nice Williams or Chater lea crankset. It will suit the bike and last as long as you'll need it.

Or convert it if you must, it's your bike, but use a lockring.

I converted a cottered Raleigh 20 to a cotterless ST crankset by replacing the spindle with a mountain bike ST spindle. Following Sheldon Brown's site I was expecting to need smaller bearings, but it all went together with the same cups (including lockring) and 0.25" bearings. Mostly helpful to me to lower the weight and make changing the crankring easier now that it is 110 BCD. Good luck.

-Will

...the most trouble free conversion is probably done using Phil Wood 26tpi rings and the proper Phil cartridge BB. But they're not cheap. I've never used a VO threadless. I have done at least one conversion by reaming and rethreading to Italian, but it seems like a lot of work and requires some tools that would cost you more than the Phil conversion.

The MTB spindle with the old cups and bearings works fine, and is cheap, but IME the availability of those spindles has gone by the way. Maybe someone knows of a source, but the last time I did one, I looked through an entire bin of spindles at the co-op and found only one that would work. You might increase your available universe of spindles if you were willing to face the BB down from 71 to 68 mm. It's only 1.5mm off each side with a facing tool. But you can't undo it once it's done.

I believe the issue is that most Raleighs from this era have non-standard threading in the bottom bracket, so you have to either:
1. find a way to use the existing cups
2. buy new cups with the 26tpi threading
3 re-tap the bottom bracket
each option has challenges.

-Will

There is a fourth option: use a cartridge with plastic cups. The cup threads will be recut/mangled on insertion, so this is a kludge but appears to work.
I used a Sunrace cartridge that takes cottered cranks as a fix for severely worn BB threads, keeping the original drive-side cup.
The installation has been trouble-free for at least 4 years. (I am about 74kg, or 165lb.)

A web site that I can no longer find suggested that some Dutch bike shops do this routinely.

I'll bet you could do that with Swiss-threaded (25.4 TPI, 1 mm pitch) aluminum cups, as well. I did something grosser, forcing an aluminum 24 TPI fixed cup into the 25.4 TPI BB shell of my Peugeot PKN-10, and the kluge has held up for almost 10 years.

Doable, I'm sure. I plan to put a Stronglight crank on my Sports using the original cups and lockring, and here's a Sprite of the same vintage as my Sports at the local co-op and it is sporting a cotterless conversion. Too much junk around for me to get a better look at it.

I went this route when installing an English (24tp1) Shimano UN71 bottom bracket having aluminum cups into my Swiss-threaded (25.4tpi) 1979 PX10.

The key to arriving at a satisfyingly-firm bottoming out of the cups in the shell was to grease everything and use a back-and-forth action with a long wrench as the cup moves steadily inward toward it's final destination. I now have about 7 years of riding on it (a few thousand miles at least), and can't imagine it ever loosening.

Another thing making this easier is a long 1/2"-drive flex-handle, which allows the force to be applied to the handle in plane with the splined fit of the tool in the cup, which reduces to zero any tendency for the tool splines to tilt out of the cup while doing the hard work (figure about ten minutes per side for tightening if you've positioned the bike on it's tires with the wrench-turner on the opposite side of bike from which cup is being worked in. Get the drive-side cup fully in before working on the other cup as usual. Over-torquing a UN71 fixed cup can break off the flange (or cause it to break free while in service), but is of no functional consequence other than the loss of part of the spline's depth, but which also makes the bb laterally adjustable toward the left side. I would avoid this though and instead select the bb length with great care.
The latest tools use a larger hex in lieu of any square-drive socket, so an 18" adjustable wrench can similarly be tilted so as to keep the handle in plane with the splines. I am recalling now that the 18" adjustable wrench was what I actually used that day back in 2011 or so.

One problem is that the UN70/71/91 bottom brackets with alloy driveside cup are long out of production, and the newer ones all have steel driveside threading.
Likely it would be fine to cut directionally-sharp self-tapping notches along the bb's steel threading, but which would somewhat alter the frame's threading in a permanent way.

# 1 is the BB Raleigh thread * or standard British ?

*1 3/8" (1.375) - 26 tpi vs 1.370" x 24 tpi

On my Sports, I used the original cups, a 73mm Shimano spindle, and 6mm balls, per Sheldon. Worked out very well. ymmv

I have an actual clubman, a Rudge Aero Special with 531 frame and a three-speed Sturmey hub. I want to do your conversion to an old TA crank to reduce weight, get my 170 mm crank length, and be able to go to a 46/30 or similar gearing, and keep a really low Q. I'm kind of at the first step, to remove the old crank and clean it all up, then start some test fitting with my TA crank and spindle in the English cups (26 tpi) to see what the fitting issues are. I hope I only need to assemble it and voila! But that might be too easy.

My bike has nasty-feeling bearings, so needs a total overhaul (front hub, BB, and headset before I can ride and evaluate it.

But I don't think your concern about damaging cotter pins has any merit. If you can get your existing crankset dismantled and rebuild it carefully using pins from Bikesmith Design, you will have an installation that is as good as new. Talk to Mark Stonich at Bikesmith Design about weight limits and durability - I don't think you have anything to worry about if you put it together right.

I don't know if it would help, but the BB shell could be cut down with facing tooling to 68 mm width, which would facilitate using spindles or cartridge BBs following the ISO BB standard. But we still have to deal with the 26 tpi versus the 24 tpi difference in thread pitch.

This response is really late, sorry to awake the zombie. I never followed up to share what I finally did.

I decided to try to keep the original Raleigh threads without re-facing the Raleigh BB shell, and used a TA 314 BB spindle. If it didn't work there was always the LBS with a thread-cutter.

Getting the original cotters out was a very hard job, but the original spindle was only a little damaged. I was, however, very down on cotters! I dug out my TA box o' crap and found the 314 spindle diameter fit through the holes in the BB cups, and that the distance between the TA spindle bearing tracks was the same as that of the original Raleigh Industries BB spindle. Therefore, the TA 314 spindle and the TA 5-vis 50.4 mm crank arms would (and do) fit into the Raleigh BB shell and bearing set. I tried it without a chainring to see if the crank arm ends both cleared the chainstays by the same margin! Next I bolted on a 46-tooth TA chainring (touring), and its clearance and true spinning were great! Later on I checked the chainring widths and decided I needed the wider Pista chainring to match the rear sprocket, which required a ⅛ chain. I found a 49 tooth Pista ring and now that's what I have on the frame.

Current steps are to install the "new" alloy rear rim (Wolber/Super Champion Modele 58 40/32) on the original 1952 AW steel hub, an alloy FM from 1954, or an alloy AW from 1953. The FM is my preference, but we'll see if I can get the indicator out to check it. It feels funny. If it's a problem I might just go with the alloy AW. I also have to lace and true the original front rim.

It's not about weight-weenieing, but I think these changes will reduce the bike weight by about 1 pound. I'll never actually prove it, however. The tires will be wired on Pasela Tserv rather than Dunlop Special High-pressure. I guess they are about the same. A Kalloy seat pin replacing a rusty steel Raleigh Industries post gets probably another 2 ounces, at most. So far all the other parts are planned to be original 70 year old Raleigh Industries.

Thanks for the update!

I put an aluminum alloy crank, stem, bars, seatpost and dual pivot brakes on an old triumph/Raleigh three speed. I even laced 590 cr18s to it and while it worked really well, it didn't make the bike super light. I have a supercourse set up as a three speed that kicks it's butt. They are both useful however.