So some of you will remember the white Pugeot I've been working on over winter break.

Some of you won't.

It's a Pug mixte. I was cleaning it up, and disassembled the front chainwheel parts, just some nuts and bolts, but failed to tighten one of the bolts all the way.

This one:


It fell out while riding, I discovered when I got home tonight, and I've fudged a pinchy bolt for the hole for now, but one thing led to another, like always.

The chainring is slightly bent, a huge pet peeve of mine.
I could remove them all, or replace the crankset,

but if I did that I'd want three-piece cranks.

"If you give a mouse a cookie..."

So I've been thinking about switching the whole mess to a simple three-piece crankset.

But then the bottom bracket is French threaded, a potential hitch-




My readings and research on this has led me to lots of technical jargon and numbers and diameters and thread spacing and pitching and... blah!

Keep it simple.

In plain language, can I get help/advice on the easiest way to make this thing a three-piece crankset?
I'm so done with cotters.

-Nick

PS- I was looking at Velo Orange's Edco French thread BB, but $88 seems a little much, so I suppose that's a "like," not a "I'm going to spend a week of work on this."


-Nick (again)

PS-

The picture is old, but the bike has cleaned up beautifully.



I painted the headtube myself with a black enamel paint, it looks nice, although I feel somewhat guilty for spur-of-the-moment painting it, but the lug outlining was complete CRAP on it before. I thought it was done with a blunt sharpie for a long time, until I realized it really was paint.

And before someone really notices, there's a spot on the upper headtube lug that looks like the paint slipped over onto the white, on a corner. It didn't, to defend my mediocre paint job. That's a chip in the white...

And (always adding things to these darned posts!) this isn't done yet, just a works in progress.

Hence the missing bolt and the wish to convert cranks or something...

I have the same problem. I plan to take the existing spindle to a LBS and dig through their bucket. Some LBS's tend to save old parts, other pitch them.

(I am too cheap to buy something new, as the bike cost me $5)....

If you are going to keep that crankset for a while, I would remove the chain guard and use oxalic on the chainrings. Then polish them up with NevrDull and they will look great. Be careful removing the cotter pin as the french used an odd size (smaller than the rest of the world). Leave the nut in place while you drive it out so you don't mess up the threads.

Edco French threaded bottom bracket ==> https://velo-orange.com/edbobr.html

The chainring is slightly bent, a huge pet peeve of mine.
I could remove them all, or replace the crankset,

Why not straighten the chainring?

I've read about people having trouble converting UO8's BB, but for me it was easy.
I just swapped out the cottered spindle for a square taper one. I think I used the same drive side cup. An english threaded non drive side cup threaded in perfectly. It was really easy to convert so I could run any old square taper crankset.

That (changing the spindle) is the simplist way to do it. Just use the existing cups. No need to change the bottom bracket. However, it is getting harder to find the correct spindle in these days of sealed bottom brackets.

So I just need a new spindle?

How hard would it be to get one? Just take off the cottered one and ask an LBS for help?

Or does anyone here have said spindle?

It's all somewhat confusing and frustrating for me...

Just for the record, you have a 3 piece crankset. What you want is a cotterless 3 piece crankset.

Sheldon recommended replacement spindles intended for italian (70 mm) bottom brackets but I have seen 3 series spindles advertised on a popular website as being appropriate for the switch as well. Trial and error is probably the only way you'll find out for sure what you can get away with. If you have any regular bottom brackets lying around, throw the spindle in there and see if the adjustable cup threads in too far. If not it's your lucky day and any readily available standard spindle will work. If your cups have thin walls you'll need a slightly scarcer italian width spindle, they are harder to find (unless you want ISO taper) but they are definitely out there. If you let me know which you need I'll try to point you towards a source.

Or you can just wait. Velo Orange will be manufacturing a house brand, french threaded, sealed bearing Bottom bracket in the near future, according to posts on the VO blog.

https://velo-orange.blogspot.com/2008...-sourcing.html

Waiting may be the option, or trying various "extra" spindles out may very well work also...

The English-threaded adjustable cup had to be a forced fit. Did you use ISO 1.375x24TPI or the older English standard of 26TPI, which is much closer to the Peugeot's 1mm metric thread pitch?

I have cotterless Sugino cranks on my UO-8 and French-threaded Sugino cups, which can be a bit hard to find.

I think those french spindles are a little bigger than the english ones. The important thing is the bearing race diameter and spacing. The spacing can be off a millimeter or two and you can compensate with the adjustable cup.
They show up on Ebay for $10 or so.

A few years back I found a few Series 5 spindles. These are a direct replacement for the original cottered spindle used with thin cups. Used one on my UO8 and one on my wife's UO18. May have another someplace. I'll look.