I'm helping a neighbor do some work on his bike. He posed this question to me: Can he swap out a Sugino spindle for a Campy spindle? My first response to him was no, I didn't think it would work - but that comes from me never having tried it before. So I thought before I pronounced his plan dead that I would pose it to this group first. Here are the specifics:

His frame currently sports a Campy BB, the crank he's removing is Strada, 151 BCD. He wants to replace the Strada with a Sugino AT triple, which requires a longer spindle. As it happens, he has the correct Sugino spindle but not the complete BB. He wants to swap out the Campy spindle for the longer Sugino spindle. Can't be done, right? Or am I passing along bad intel?

I will now bow to the collective wisdom.

Try it. I mix and match all the time.

Me thinks it will work fine. Depends on if everything is spaced appropriately.

It might work. However, if the Campy cups are the thick cups, the dimension between the bearing surfaces on the Sugino spindle will probably be longer by a couple of mm. Try it and see.

A 151mm BCD crank suggests that it pre-dates the thick, rifled bottom bracket cups. If these are in fact thin,unrifled cups, I strongly suspect that there would be little problem using the Sugino spindle.

+1 thin cups should work fine.

Well, there sure seems to be a heck of a lot of lateral movement when I try this. I'm back at the house now and I'm going to dig around in my stuff to see if I've got cups and bearings that will fit his spindle. Ain't it fun trying to hodge lodge other people's stuff together?

Are you perhaps trying a spindle intended for a 68mm wide bottom bracket in a 70mm wide shell? Are there any markings on both spindles you could share? Lay them side by side and check that the width between the bearing races is the same.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Yeah, that's precisely what he was trying to do. I pulled both the spindles when I saw how much play there was and placed them side by side. Way off.

I went home, raided my stash, came up with a complete BB and spindle that worked out for him. Told him to stow his spindle for another time, and now he owes me (at least) a case of beer.

Love it - Some times the parts box gets so big you can find another bike in it...

Box? As in singular? The thing is, I sometimes kind of wind up supplying parts to everyone in town who owns an "old" bike.

Glad to hear that a rare old bb is being spared from utilitarian use. These bb's haven't been produced in what, 50 years?!

Perhaps he'll have the sense to keep the entire crankset and bb together, it's worth more that way and might be more useful.

This is precisely what's been done. We cleaned everything up very nicely, then wrapped and bagged the entire kit for storage. All is well in the world now.