Lots of old bikes used to use cotters to fix the cranks to the bottom bracket axle. I know that old french bikes had them, as did old english bikes. My question has to do with whether or not the cottered cranks from different countries are cross compatible. I understand that this is a very general question that probably has many, many answers. I was looking up French pedals and came across these
https://cgi.ebay.com/Zeus-later-2000-...ayphotohosting
I assume that these are for threaded cranks.
Do english cottered cranks differ from french cottered cranks? I ask because I need to find new cottered pedals for my French cranks and need to know what to search for .

They'll fit your cranks if you have French pedal threads. The cotters that hold the crank arms onto the spindle have nothing to do with it. French pedal threads are 14mm x 1.25. Standard pedal threads are 9/16"x20tpi. Your French cranks may or may not have French pedal threads.

See the first paragraph under "Replacing Cotters" 2/3 of the way down on this page:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tooltips/cotters.html

That's helpful.

Yes, cotters are PITA any way you look at it. I wish Sheldon had been around when I was trying to replace my cotters back in the day. French ones are different. (Ok, Sheldon was around but there was no Internet and I didn't live in Massachusettes). I didn't know that you you had to press the cotters in first before tightening so they kept coming loose

Another issue with cotter pins for French-made cranksets is that they're narrower than English. Here's the relevant paragraph from Sheldon Brown: "The diameter of the round part of the cotter tends to be standardized according to nationality. Most use 9.5 mm, including British, Asian and most German bicycles. French and Italian bicycles used 9 mm, or sometimes 8.5 mm."

I learned this while trying to replace the cotters on an old Peugeot. However, I don't know if an old Stronglight cottered crankset from a vintage Raleigh would have French or English-sized. I'll have to dig around in the parts bin to answer that question.

Neal

Did anybody read the original post? He's looking for pedals for his cottered French cranks.

Yeah, I could have been more clear.
Do French cottered cranks "accept" French threaded pedals? I suppose this is a stupid question, but I always assumed that cotters are what kept the pedals on the cranks, thus negating the need to "screw" them in using threads.
When I see an add in ebay for French threaded pedals, I should assume these pedals are meant for cotterless cranks right? I am just very confused about this... I'm sorry

The cotters hold the crank arms onto the spindle. The pedals screw into holes at the other end of the crank arms. You don't have to know anything about bicycles to understand that. Just go look at one.

I suppose I missed the class the day my first grade teacher introduced us to the marvelous invention known as the cotter. Silly me!
Thanks for enlightening me and showing me my ignorance.