63rickert

I am going to assume that Sheldon saw a crank and spindle just as described. Ofmega and American marketed version Avocet were plain odd. Broke in lots of ways, generated lots of fitting problems. Last gasp of Magistroni. Some things that are forty years old may be let go.

JohnDThompson 

I don't know of any date-code markings on the Avocet/Ofmega cranks. The fact that it worked fine on a Campagnolo bottom bracket suggests it is one of the later, Campagnolo copy models.

repechage

Interloc Racing Design / IRD

Is IRD.

merziac

Sorry Jim, my bad, see it now on review. That being said, I have never encountered much of this at all and IME if you just snug the bolt down after the fact, it all settles down and is fine in the long run. And again, I probably don,t ride hard enough for this to ever be a concern but in years gone by I logged plenty of miles without incident, YMMV.

tiger1964 

OK, what do you think of using this? TOKEN Never heard of the brand, but from appearances it might even take the same installation tool as the Velo Orange BB. Spindle length is at least close but I'll check my notes on that. If do-able, might be an affordable way out and I can presumably keep an eye out for a decent pair of Campy crank arms (looking on eBay, don't they all have the dreaded "pedal rub" ?)

+1. Well, that's what I'm hoping!

I looked that up earlier, thanks. Almost tempted to see if I could get the Defiant track crank with a road chainring, say bye-bye to the front derailleur and make the bike a "1x". Looks to me that both IRD and VO offer cranksets but with small-tooth-count rings. I"m doing a lot of flat-land riding.

noglider 

It seems that the way to manufacture a good cartridge bearing bottom bracket has become common knowledge, so these unknown copiers seem to be making good products at low price. Give a shot with that TOKEN unit. Never heard of it, but it's worth a try, since replacing these is so much quicker than the old kind.

tiger1964 

Probably going to. If I find my receipt from VO on the BB I have, or they e-mail me back, so I know the spindle length of what I have so I know how many mm this is different (I suspect 2mm), ready to go and have this in two days.

Alas, the rest of my bikes are still in pieces, so 'll likely do the unthinkable and ride on the current arrangement a few more times and hope I do not do irreparable damage (GOTTA ride).

I see there's also a genuine Campy BB at Amazon (and I'm sure elsewhere), 115mm and Italian, but $$$ by comparison and there's discussion about early vs. later Campy tapers being different, so...

On the other hand, I did a search for Token's website to see what is actually made, found this page suggesting 115mm is for TRIPLES? Comments on others' choice of spindle length?

EDIT: Yikes! Found my VO receipt, the one in there is 118mm, somehow I suspect 111mm is too short, kinda surprised there would be that much range of sizes, the one I took out is 115mm. Somehow thinking I need a longer BB, where to look?

3RD EDIT: I decided to do some measuring. Point of closest approach, crank arm to chainstay: 14mm right, 12-13mm left. For comparison I checked my wife's Windsor (Campy cranks): about 8-9mm both right and left. Perhaps these 115mm to 118mm spindles are longer than needed?

Bad Lag

I've been thinking about this thread, as I had a similar situation once.

A word of caution -

As you continue to crank down on the bolt, be careful you are not driving the edge of the chainwheel into the side of the chain stay. You can get into a situation where the chainwheel rubs on the stay. Even if it doesn't happen in the static condition, it can still happen when the frame flexes under load (in a turn).

Visual inspection of the chain stay will tell the tale. If the paint is scraped or missing, you have a problem you need to deal with.

Salamandrine 

FWIW Origin 8 sells an ISO cartridge BB in 115 for like $35. (it wouldn't surprise me if all the Taiwan sourced cartridge bottom brackets are made in the same factory)

I think there's a reasonably good chance it will work with your Avocet crankset. Going from JIS to ISO will bring in your crankarms about 4-5mm on each side, depending on who you ask. That should get you fairly close to ideal for fit on the spindle/crank interface. Should be reasonable for chainstay clearance also.

Did you measure you chainline as it stands now? It's a little tricky to do but it would be helpful. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/chainline.html

tiger1964 

(A) I was a good boy today; went for a ride and just got back and did NOT reach for a 14mm wrench to check the crank arms!

(B) I waited a while today to see if there were new posts, then ordered the Token BB, and two BB spacers from VO; both should be here in 48 hours.

tiger1964 

Update: First, I rode on Thursday on the old setup, 33 miles - a slower group so the pace was off, indeed "for fun" I did the entire ride in one gear, working to increase my cadence. Did not need the 14mm wrench I was carrying just in case.

The bottom bracket and the spacer having arrived, I just dove in to the replacement. First, the cranks were indeed on tight, but not insurmountably so; my biggest challenge was, with the end of the spindle recessed 7mm-8mm (estimated) in the end of the crank arms, the Park Tool crank remover bottomed out on itself before bringing pressure to bear on the end of the spindle. Brev Camp to the rescue - cranks came readily off.

So the old BB came out easily, and I went to put in the new fixed cup in. I had the spacers handy but had missed the warning on Velo Orange's website in the "extended description" that the diameter is too small for Italian -- thought I might be doing a lot of Dremelling. Turns out a dry fit left ample clearances from the chain stays, etc. Indeed, I would get a better chainline if the fixed cup could go INBOARD a mm or so. Something that caught my attention is that even going to ISO, the spindle ends are still pretty far recessed into the crank arm; this I did not expect. Might still be shopping for Campy/other crank arms.

Have not done a test ride yet and thus no final tightening and thread lock. Will report more later.

tiger1964 

Another update: A couple of rides, tightened to 30 ft/lb with thread locker, so far so good, I'll try to resist taking a wrench to them no matter how much my fingers twitch. Still, spindle is far recessed, might continue looking for other, non-Avocet, crank arms.

tiger1964 

A couple of months later, neither crank has fallen off but they creak like crazy under load.

trailangel

Did you re-torque after riding for 20-30 miles? Re-torque one time after initial installation.

merziac

At 64 posts, this has been discussed ad nauseum.

merziac

So I had a bike that creaked under load, checked and rechecked the BB, spindle, pedals with AX adaptors, crank arms, shimmed, lubed, dry, torque, retorque, loctite, etc, yada, yada.

Finally rigged up the stethoscope with long plastic hose only, taped it down to BB, rear axle area, seatpost then seatlug where the seatstay was cracking, noise was transmitting all over the place, sounded like crank something, wasn't.

tiger1964 

Yes, I mentioned it in post 62 but perhaps was not clear. STILL considering a retightening, I figure I have little to lose.

You got that right! But the problem still is not resolved.

Didn't think about the frame. Interestingly, I'm changing the frame. I had suspected it was the seat/seatpost but I tried standing on the pedals up a grade, something I normally was not doing. Creaking remained.

jethin

I’m coming late to this, may have missed something, and am not an expert. But it sounds like 1) you may have had a bad taper 2) you ran and tightened down an iso crank on a jis bb and probably didn’t improve the situation 3) you may now have a damaged taper. Sorry to have a bummer take on this.

If the above is correct you may want to try going back to the jis spindle. Crank that sucker down until you distort the taper enough to get a solid fit. If the crank holds and doesn’t crack then leave it for the rest of its service life.

Salamandrine 

Avocet cranks were not immune to creaking. This is probably exacerbated by having an imperfect fit on the BB spindle. Creaking is mostly just annoying. Probably won't ever get permanently fixed until the BB is swapped out for a skinnier spindle, or the cranks are changed.

30 lb/ft and loctite on the threads is IMO a good choice for this situation. I think going higher torque than this is not a good idea. I would recommend a dry fit on the tapers though - no grease or oil at all. This was what Avocet recommended BITD. I realize there's a controversy about this now, but that's how it was done then, and it works.

This forum is pretty cool though, because until fairly recently I was always puzzled by Sheldon Brown's statements about Avocet spindles being smaller than everyone else and generally incompatible. I recalled mix and matching Avocet cranks with imp***ty. Turns out there were two version: the early small spindles/tapers, and the later more standard ones. Learn something new every day... I got my first Avocet cranks in 1980, so the undersize version must have been very early production.

conspiratemus1

I thought the "Ah-Hah!" (or "Eureka!") moment was when you reported that the end of the spindle was 7-8 mm deep to the outer edge of the crank hole, indicating that the crank doesn't fit the spindle.

tiger1964 

Quite possibly. That said, I did not measure the same distance on the original Campy ISO spindle, and it did not creak then. Obviously, the JIS one did not work out. Hoped that the replacement ISO BB would fix it. We all know what ultimately needs to happen here...

merziac

Maybe, is the Masi going to get this crank, creaky spindle and all? I would still investigate with the stethoscope for finality.

I will reiterate that I too have mixed, matched, mismatched, cobbled, shimmed, screwed, glued, long and short spindles of all tapers, used washers to space out the bottomed crank bolts and have never not been able to resolve creaking and or loosening.

Again, maybe/probably I don't ride hard enough.

merziac

Mine creaked out of the saddle too, stethoscope confirmed it was still the seatstay end/seatlug.

Salamandrine 

Last mystery out of the saddle creak I had turned out to be the spring pins on the front brake, or maybe it was the main pivots. I dunno. I oiled both and it went away.

tiger1964 

Unless I trip over some decent yet affordable Campy 144BCD crank arms soon... yeah. Still temped to bolt on the Stronglight 93's I have sitting around.