Cottered bottom bracket help needed!!!

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Hi

I'm both new to bike building and new to this forum so please excuse the newbie!

I am trying to install a three-piece cottered crank on to a barracuda Tia frame and am having some issues with both the clearance of the chainwheel and the cranks. I have tried both a 137mm and a 140mm spindles and neither work. It is a 46 tooth wheel and 160mm cranks. Is there a way to make this work or will I have to go and find different parts? And if so, any ideas on what I would need to get?

Thanks in advance

Paul
 
It looks like you're trying to put a crank with a small chainline and tread (aka "Q-Factor) on a bike with chainstays spread out far enough to accommodate wide tires. You can try usung an even wider spindle, but be prepared to move the shainline of the rear sprocket(s) further out. Here's a big-ol 152mm cottered crank spindle... measure to make sure the shoulders for the bearing are within spec for your frame/BB, and you might want to measure your frame to try to find the ideal spindle length, including what offset you'll require...

http://www.niagaracycle.com/categories/pyramid-bottom-bracket-axle-cottered-46-x-55-x-51-x-152
 
Do you have the original crank parts? Or like me, trying to fit parts on a bare frame with nothing else?
 
Some spindles are longer on one end than the other too, check you have it the right way around...

Luke.
That's what i meant by "offset"--seems like most have more length on the driveside....

Do you have the original crank parts? Or like me, trying to fit parts on a bare frame with nothing else?
Looking at pics online, I think Barracuda TIA's came with square-taper BB/cranksets....I bet the OP has a spectacular-looking chainwheel on a cottered crank, and he wants to put it on his modern frame b/c it looks rad. Which makes sense, but most of the cottered cranks have a fairly narrow tread. :D
 
That's exactly the case Bicycle808! Although I wouldn't say the chain wheel is particularly spectacular, it does work well with the look of the bike. And yes cottered spindles are generally longer on the drive side. Just an extra 5mm on each end would make it all work.

Thank you to everybody for the help and I am seriously considering the afore mentioned 152mm spindle. Any suggestions on how to properly measure the frame to find out the required tread?

Thanks again!
 
Here's what I'd do:

First, I'd measure from the center of the BB shell to exactly 160mm up the chainstays, to see where the crankarms would theoretically contact the stays. Measure that up, from the outer edge of one stay to the other, at the 160mm from center-of-BB. This would be your minimum tread; add a few MM to allow for clearance.

Next, take both crankarms and mock them up on your widest current spindle, free from the frame. No need to worry about bearings or cups or whatever; you don't even want pins b/c you'll want to have the crankarms running parallel to eachother, with the pedal-ends directly across from each other and the ends of the spindle flush with the outer surface of the crankarms on each side. Measure the length between the inner surface of each crankarm at the pedal-end; this will give you the tread for your cranks with the current BB spindle.

Finally, take the arms off the spindle, and measure all three lengths; the space between the cones' "shoulders", and the space between the cones and the end of the spindle on each side. From here, you should be able to extrapolate how much more length you'll need at either side, and you can probably estimate whether or not the 152mm spindle will do the trick; if not, it will aid you in your quest to find one that does.

Throughout this whole exercise, you can also find out what your approximate chainline is with the current spindle (measure from the center of the inner segment of the spindle to where the sprocket's teeth intersect with the spindle); this will get you within a mm or so of the actual chainline of the current set-up. However much longer the new spindle's drive-side segment is, that's how much further outboard your chainline will become with the theoretical new set up. I imagine you'll be increasing it by at least 5mm, based on your post above. That's a significant difference, but we can almost certainly find a way to work around it at the rear, depending on what your rear hub and sprocket(s) look(s) like...

HTH.
-Rob

ps- LEt me know if you need pictures of any of this; i have a crank/spindle i can demonstrate wth, plus some bare frames, but i don't have access to it all now, b/c i'm not at home. When i get off of work tonight, i can hook it up.
 
@Paul Richards it occurs to me that my directions above could, theoretically, neglect the issue of the offset spindle, and may potentially lead to a miscalculation as far as clearance on the NDS goes....I'm probably over-analyzing it, but it's a slow day here, and I'd feel bad if your calculations put you off by a mm or 2 a when a slightly more thorough measurement could've prevented it....

A way to account for that would be to measure the from the centerline of the spindle's center segment to the NDS crankarm at the pedal, and shoot for something that would put the NDS crankarm out past 1/2 of the figure you got by measuring between the outer edge of the chainstays. Does that make sense?
 

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