I don't see this documented anywhere, so I'll contribute this to our knowledge pool.

I have had a pair of Berthet pedals languishing in a dark corner for some years now because they had 1/2" spindles that were useless to me. Last weekend at the Cronometro swap I spotted a set of 9/16" x 20TPI Lyotard 45CAs for dirt cheap. The construction of both pedals is remarkably similar:




and it occurred to me that they might provide donor axles for my hitherto useless to me Berthets. Indeed, on removal the axles proved to be similar in all the important areas:



and the transplant was completely successful (the 1/2" Berthet axle is the bottom one in the picture; the donor 45CA axle is above it)!

Given that 45CAs are much more plentiful and cheap than Berthets these days (and a surprising number of NOS Berthets with 1/2" axles seem to appear on a regular basis) I thought I'd share this piece of information.

--

-John Thompson (john@os2.dhs.org)
Appleton WI USA

That's a great discovery, John!

I like Lyotard pedals which generally had often gotten a bad reputation from the cheapest "rat-trap" models which seemed to quickly rust and were the most common ones found on so many mid-range bikes of the 70s.

Lyotard used a few different axle sizes which could each be exchanged between several models. The quality of the axles never seemed to differ regardless of the price or quality of the pedals they were placed on.

The 45CA was a very light weight and decent quality pedal, and as you noticed they also came on TONS of 1970s French bikes. The alloy cages often became pretty mangled, but the guts remained in good condition. So that discovery is a very handy observation.

In the past, I'd saved a lot of the axles from the model 36 pedals. Those were the cheapest chromed steel models with a pressed steel shaft left with a visible seam. The chrome always rusted, but somehow the internals remained fine. I've made quite a few transplants by salvaging 9/16" axles onto metric French thread pedals.

In fact, later Lyotard pedal axles were commonly so carelessly manufactured (or was this really intentional?) that the thread size on the French and the British were often virtually the same and in fact almost a compromise between the two diameters. So, some folks have noticed that a US market pedal axle (marked L and R) may really be a bit loose on 9/16 cranks and may even fit snugly onto French 14 x .125 cranks with out damage - the thread pitch was extremely close anyway.

TA actually made a "universal" pedal that intentionally split the difference between English and French threads and would work in either type of crank arm.

Anybody know of a transplant axle for the Lyotard 460d?
I've ended up with a few sets of these with French threading and or threaded sections that must be intended for steel cranks as they are too short to reach through an alloy crank arm.

I like the 460d pedals and would like to make these usable with British thread alloy cranks

I guess I'm the only person on earth to like the Lyotard 36, but I have wide feet, so the lack of a retention nub as on most race pattern pedals is a major plus, and they are rebuildable. Unlike the Atom 440's.

I have several sets of the short thread Lyotards I'd like to convert to long thread spindles for alloy cranksets.