sakae cr crankset: adding a granny ring
 

this is the crank i have....
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...33680a9b98.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...205a82556c.jpg



my '85 super le tour came with a sugino gp. i like it fine, but it's rather scratched up (it came to me that way). however, it seems to be anodized, so i'd probably have to remove that to really look good, again. otoh, the sakae just needs a good polish. i have the matching 52 and 42 rings to fit it, but to make it a triple as i'd like (with a 30t) apparently requires non-standard hardware....ie, spacers and bolts. does anyone at all have a clue and, more hopefully, pictures of the necessary hardware? it's a really neat looking crank

thanks!!

ps. this may have been covered before on BF, but i'm unable to find the info

well, whaddya know??! found'em...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sakae-Ringy...-/273829336750

tried a long time ago to find them. finally. pricey, though....hmmm.

anyone know of a way to substitute, by chance??

answered my own questions..

apparently there's such a thing as countersinking "shoulder" bolts/screws....in M6 threading that i'd need. some silly combo of standard ring spacers and correct length M6's with a pan head should do it.

I don’t know for sure, but the bolts in the eBay ad you link to seem to have heads that are too long for an inner ring. I think they might actually be for a bash guard ring.

You might find properly sized and threaded bolts holding chainring-guards. I just checked a bunch but they were all 5mm, it's possible another mfr (think these were Silstar) used bigger ones.

Much depends on your final solution. Of course, you will need clearance between the heads of the bolts and the frame. If the ring your get has counter-bored holes that is better - except that means your bolt heads must fit, meaning they have to be round, which means a socket- or screwdriver-variant drive. If you are stuck with hex-head bolts you could try thinning the head a' la TA, but that risks rounding the corners, especially if you use a socket with a chamfered entry.

For the situation where you have more time than money, a vice, a hand-drill & 1/4" bit, a hacksaw, and a file - and

a) five philips drive pan-head 6mm machine screws and one 6mm nut (a coupling nut would be a good one);
b) a bit of aluminium sheet the right thickness to be your spacers;

do this:

Drill five 1/4" holes in your sheet, far enough apart that you can cut out five bits to be spacers.
Saw them out - get close to circles, anything you don't saw off you'll be filing off.
Thread them on one of the screws, add the nut and tighten,
Mount the drill in the vice and grab the nut in the jaws arranged so you can have the drill spin the stack as you file them into a circular shape (make sure you have the rotation so the stack won't unscrew).
Take each screw one-by-one and thread it into the nut, right up to the head.
If the heads need to be smaller to fit a counterbore file them as you did the stack of spacers.
Grab the nut in the vice and file the head flat, leaving a portion of the central cross to guide you.
Saw a screwdriver-slot (saw them both, somebody will probably strip one someday) lined up with the cross.
Grab the end of the screw (with the nut still at the head) that you don't need; saw the screw to length.
Grab the screw head or nut and tidy up the end of the screw with the file (this could be tricky if the bolt head is proud of the nut, use a pair of thin - about 1/8" - soft wood jaws in the vice).
Mount everything up and check for clearance, use a longer axle if necessary.

don't have the link handy but I've never had any difficulty finding triple spacers of suitable thickness on Amazon. I suggest button head allen screws of suitable length; if your hardware store doesn't have them, you can get them from McMaster or Fastenal.

Some early triples used the odd bolts you linked to in your post above:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5b7ce260e.jpeg
Others just use standard chainring bolts and spacers. It’s easy to check. Can’t remember which cranks use which, though I have the Sugino RT version of your crankset and could pull a bolt if you need.

that's incredibly kind of you to go to the length of detailing that out for me, but typical chainring spacers are what i need to do the job and i do have those.

i'll be using a standard chainring...either a campy 30t or sugino 28t...whichever looks better. and, from what i can tell, a standard ring is what was/is originally used on one of these cranks. in the ebay link i posted (the same image mountindave provides), you can see the hardware. there's a shoulder that is meant for the recessing into the standard ring bolt holes and spacers. so, in that respect, a chainring is meant to mate to the crank in mostly the standard way. the only difference is the smaller than usual threading into the crank. i had thought of drilling and tapping the crank holes to fit standard chainring bolts, but my whole intention is to make this relatively quick and easy....more so than deanodizing the original sugino crank to get it looking nice

as for the bolts (whatever it is i wind up using) clearing the stay, i had thought of that, so thanks for mentioning it. i did run some searches and found there are countersinking bolts with the necessary shoulder and a "panhead" that should fit/recess and leave necessary clearance. i could only find phillips head, though. and, they are a few threads shorter than the factory SR bolts, but they might still be long enough. i'll just have to see what some of the local hardware suppliers have

bolts i found in searching...
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f06d92e385.jpg

thank you. :) yes, i have some SR spacers that came off a "super custom" that should work. if i can get by fastenal during their business hours, i'll go there for bolts. i'm going to try lowe's or home depot, first.

yep....that would be what i need for this CR crank. i'm not wanting to pay $30-$40 for them, though. i'll find a workaround if i can...lol

i've seen your posts in a few threads related to this crank when i ran searches. thanks for chiming in!!

The Takagi triple I have uses the smaller bolts also. I have a Sakae CR crank as well. The smaller bolts are out there. The spacers are common as well. Measure the thickness of the middle chainring where it attaches to the crank. That is the thickness of the spacer you need.

that had not occurred to me. thanks! does the middle ring require any sort of spacer or is it offset enough to not need one? i ask because i have seen shimano cranks needing a thin one

Shimano typically used the very thin spacers (washers actually) when a cheaper middle ring was fitted and that was cut from thinner stock.
Many low to mid-grade BioPace cranksets were so fitted, and other newer ones as well.

like cheaper steel perhaps? the rings i have for this CR set are ano'd steel. i actually still have to locate them, but the mating tabs are thinner than aluminum rings and are offset, iirc. well, for the middle ring, anyway

The eBay listing has a “make offer” option - offer $20 and see what happens?

Cheers and good luck with the hunt!

I'm not sure that this is good advice. The essential measurement is the distance between the two planes of sprocket teeth centres. The thickness of the plate making up the sprocket may or may not be equal to half this distance, and of course even if it is the additional sprocket he may be using is not guaranteed to be of equal thickness. Further compounding this is that it also depends on the sprocket-tooth-plane being centred across the thickness of the rings (or at least identically offset), which is not always the case.

Perhaps better is to measure the spacing his crankset uses between the existing rings and arrange spacers such that that is what he gets to the third.

This.

Yes, I didn't word that correctly. I meant to say the middle chainring plus the crank spider ledge that it sits on. All the bikes I ride have triples. Generally, the spacers are 5mm up until 8 speed. That has been my experience.

Cook Brothers RSR cranks use similar bolts and spacers

sorry, i don't know how i missed this. thanks for chiming in as i did not think of that. otoh, the set's being sold with spacers. at any rate, i'm not purchasing them at that price. gotta do things cheap right now :)

thanks! i'll look into that :)

thank you! even at a possible $20, i still need to try and do it cheaper.