ehcoplex 

Well yeah, but.... where's the fun in that?
I'm going to wing it and give the Sugino cups a try, but if they don't work I'll likely end up with a VO French BB...

Funny thing (or maybe not so funny...), I'm also having an issue with the BB on the Trek I'm working on. Bike was missing a FD, so I built it up with Cyclone mechs I had. With the asymmetric BB (Hatta) spindle installed with the longer end on the drive side (which is how it was when I took it apart) the FD couldn't make the shift onto the big ring (triple). Flipped around, there's still plenty of clearance and the FD shifts great & the chainline is good. But now the NDS crank seems too far out.... But I think I'll just live with it for a while.

3alarmer 

...IIRC, by the time the 6th was published, sealed units were well established in use, and they dropped the cup and spindle section to print other stuff. I'm not against experimentation, if you've got the time and the inclination. But even at the co-op nowadays, with a big box of miscellaneous spindles and an equally confused collection of old cups, it's pretty hard to get a good result. My own collection of cup and cone BB's is all stuff where I saved both the cups and the spindles, and banded them together. I only use one occasionally.

I think even Raleigh threading can still be had from Phil Wood, but I haven't checked recently.

ehcoplex 

Actually, the 6th ed. linked above does have a lot of specs/info/etc on cup and cone BBs…
(certainly more than enough to give me a headache combing through it!)

3alarmer 

.
...good to know. Thank you.

merziac

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Exactly this.

(Out comes the soapbox), anybody doing this, IMO should be strongly encouraged to learn the hunt and peck, mix and match game for the greater good.

All the specs, stats, wisdom and experience of others are fine until you interpret them wrong or are wrong about what you're working on or with.

The skill building that can be garnered from this can be invaluable and lead to much more problem solving along the way, many abilities cannot be taught, only learned, often the hard way.

On the fly and by the seat of your pants can often yield far greater results than by the book once you develop a mindset that gets you there. Having and using the book is and can still be a vital part but when it doesn't work, outside the box may be crucial for success.

Road Fan

I've done this sort of thing a few times, matching across French, old English, and even Italian, trying to get a low-Q setup on the bike in which the chainset feels good to pedal, does not have chainrings, bolts, or crankarms trying to bash holes in my old frame, and have similar pedal offsets from the frame centerline (similar foot to centerline offset on the left and right side).

The original Rudge cups were Raleigh Industries standard, and the bearing races and threads were in pretty good condition and the original Q-factors were pretty narrow so I decided to keep them. The

In the course of my "return to road" work on my 1952 Rudge Aero Special (a lighter than usual bike in the style of their Clubman-type bikes), I've converted to a pretty old TA 5 vis chainset configured as a single with a pista chainring, so the sprocket on the AW hub could be kept, a pista-width chain could be used and match the chainring, and I'd have a nice low Q. After I got the cottered crankarms off (buggerring half of it beyond repair - grrr) the bearing faces on the cups were in pretty good condition. Rooting through my BOC collection (boxes of crap) I found the TA set and a TA arm which I had somehow listed as "for pista." So now the critical technical compatibility point was whether the distance between the bearing races was the same for the cottered spindle and the TA spindle and do the races seem to be the same radius, matching the same size ball. I forgot the numbers but the bearing shoulder positions matched up and the bearing races looked and measured the same.

So I think the most critical compatibility point between wildly-different spindles is the spacing between the bearing shoulders and race areas, and whether the spindle is not particularly smaller than the big hole in the drive side and NDS cups. If this hole is too big grit will enter through the gap and trash your bearings prematurely. If the hole is too small (I don't have an example of this) the peg just might not fit into the hole. A rare problem in my experience but if you have it, it will be a stopper unless you can center and mill a new hole in the old cups - I'm not that skilled!

Second most important is drive side spindle length. If this is too short the chainset could damage your frame. If it is too long you won't get an acceptable chainline. Most vintagists pooh-pooh this point, but if you are assembling a pista or other single-ring bike with no derailleurs, it could encourage chain-throwing. If the bike is really a track bike this could mean lost races or injured riders.

A subset of this is undesired Q-factor which is a less-fundamental issue than banged up chainstays.

Third is the aesthetics - are the crankarm ends the same distance from the chainstays or the frame center, on both sides of the the bike? Feet the same distance from the chainstays, no heel knocking? To achieve this degree of design balance is a game of millimeters, or just luck. Sutherland's 4 and to a lesser-degree the 5th edition are good guides. The Ballantine handbook for bike mechanics has a flow chart for procedures like this, which can be used with the Sutherland's books.

In any case you can also use modular BBs like Shimano to get ideas like this to work but I would have to go to to Phil's to get BBs which fit the Old Raleigh threadings.

But I've cross-fitted spindles in this manner for a 1970-ish Peug UO-8 and for the Rudge. I fitted a very low-Q BB to my Terraferma using these concepts and an IRD BB (just lucky!), so it's possible to do this stuff with modern frames and cartridge BBs.

Murray Missile 

My "sediments" exactly.

ehcoplex 

Just as follow up..... Another BF member sent me an assortment of Japanese French-threaded cups (Sugino, Tangy) to try out. All had thicker cups than the original Stronglight, but 4mm of spacers later and all is well! Chainline is good, crank-end-to-chain-stay clearances pretty much equal. Now to find the right chainrings.....

merziac

Like I said......

Murray Missile 

A quick PSA for the bottom bracket/cup files since others will probably find this thread while searching for information.. I just tore down my '72 Gitane Interclub which came new with cotterless Sugino Maxy cranks. By all accounts being that early it should have had either a French or Swiss BB but the cups were BSA threaded Sugino. In addition the '77 Puegeot UO-9 I recently parted out had a Nervar 1011 cotterless crank with unmarked BB and it was also BSA threaded. It seems everything I ever "knew" (which was next to nothing) about French bike bottom brackets was wrong.

ehcoplex 

Apparently when it comes to French bikes, no matter how much you know there's always at least a 50% chance you'll be wrong!

Murray Missile 

I'd be happy with only 50% wrong. I overcame my "Franco Velo Phobia" a couple years ago after a self imposed ban on them of over 20 years due to a brief fling with a Motobecane mixte. I now have 7 of them, 4 Gitanes and 3 Peugeots, and just when I think I've got one all figured out....guess again! I may have a relapse!

merziac

This is precisely why everyone should fall in to this head first early on and get a handle on it.

So much to be gained by digging in, taking a drubbing and coming out of it with a better feel of it, one of the most "valuable learning experiences" one can have in this wonderful C+V universe.

Yes, plenty of plug and play solutions but problem solving skills to be learned from it can translate to many other aspects of this that can really save you from yourself when it really matters.

Murray Missile 

I do love a challenge and I'm definitely getting my money's worth!

ehcoplex 

And all of which is to support the strategy of having several bike builds going at once, so when one hits an bump and needs to source an odd bit or spend some time figuring out how to make a mix-and-match work, etc. it all doesn't just grind to a halt! Pivot attention to one of the other builds while you scour the virtual world for technical data or a part (and then wait for the mailman to come...)! See, I need another bike to work on precisely because I'm delayed in finishing this one!