What's so great about this spindle?
 

http://cgi.ebay.com/N-O-S-Vintage-St...QQcmdZViewItem

I suppose the obvious answer is supply/demand, but why the demand?

I've heard of needle headset bearings but not of a needle bb bearing before. Would seem to be quite rare.

NOS and very rare I suppose? Maybe someone will chime in and tell us it's for an early 60 crankset or something.

nice catch there Zorro (the fox so cunning and free)

and you wouldn't believe what I did to that song when I was 5 and
wanted to be Zorro!

marty

I suppose if you need one you really need it. I believe the needle bearings run on the main spindle and the ball bearings run against the flanges. A unique design for sure. Takes special cups of course as well.

I think the seller is confused. This looks like it is intended for cartridge bearings. I actually have a complete stronglight BB set with allow cups that came with a Galli/Stronglight/Maillard groupo.

I also used to have a roller bearing BB, though I can't remember the manufacurer. If I remember right, the bearing surface was a convex cone, rather than the concave surface of a loose-bearing spindle or the straight cylinder of a spindle that fits in a cartridge bearing.

I don't know if the seller was confused or not, but the buyer seemed to know what he wanted. Still hard for me to fathom paying more for a spindle than for a complete Phil Wood BB.

Here is an example:

http://www.velobase.com/SearchVisual...l_Category=119

Wow. Prices are really getting out of hand. What are people thinking?

It's my understanding that the very first XTR bottom brackets worked exactly this way, before everything went to cartridge.

I emailed the seller and asked him what it's for and why he thinks it went for as much as it did.
This was the message he returned:

"The spindle is specific to a Stronglight bottom bracket cups. The cubs have two pairs of roller bearings, one vertical and one horizontal to support the load. Why it fetched so much. My guess weak dollar and collector interest by foreign countries. Hope this helps."