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Fitting cotter pins

Old 08-27-20, 01:22 PM
  #51  
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
That is interesting and useful. All my cranks are old and quite thin. The attempt to use the Bikesmith tool was a disaster and now am sure there is no further need to think about that.
Yes, I knew your bikes are old and racy and have thin cranks; hence my comment!

Originally Posted by 63rickert
I am working with new pins. No old pins here. They don’t fit at all if used as is.

Yesterday had a forty minute tutorial on how to file and get a flat surface. My teacher was a plumber and luthier. He said I was the worst student he had ever had but by end of session my work was good enough for plumbing or bikes. Still no clue at all what the shape of the cotter pin should be. How steep is the taper? How deep is the cut? No one seems to know.
The angle of the taper doesn't matter, as long as both cotters have the same angle. Whatever angle you have, the spindle will rotate to accomodate it. A shallow angle will be stronger, but will require more force to wedge it in place.

Put the cotter through the little hole in the crank arm, without the spindle in place, and push it down to where it looks right, with about the same amount protruding on both sides; now look through the bigger hole and look at the tapered surface from the side. Compare the empty space to the shape of the spindle. You should be able to get a pretty good idea of how thick the cotter should be.

If you hold your two cotters face-to-face, the threads opposed, the round sides should be parallel.

Originally Posted by francophile
Re Francophile's drawing, Remember that the spindle will rotate in the hole to fit any angle (within a certain range). In the middle drawing, the spindle will rotate a little bit counterclockwise; in the drawing on the right, it will rotate a little clockwise. After you initially tap the cotter in place, try to rotate the crank arms against one another (stomp on both pedals at once, then turn them over and stomp on them that way). Install the nut, but only finger tight. Tap the cotter again, try to move the cranks again, tap the cotter again, test to see if the nut loosened... and repeat these steps until there is no movement. When the nothing seems to move any more, tap the cotter one more time, as is you really mean it this time, and tighten the nut with a wrench. Now you "should be" all done.
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Old 08-27-20, 02:06 PM
  #52  
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I'm kind of at a loss for words. This is really pretty simple. Wherever there is a mark on the sharpied surface, that will tell you whether your angle is too shallow or too steep.

I honestly am struggling to believe that this thread isn't a troll. You have posted many times in the past about framebuilding techniques, and why a truck mechanic shouldn't work on a bicycle, and how Shimano doesn't understand why the old ways worked. Yet you can't grasp the mechanical theory of a bench vise? You can't understand installing pins that "schoolboys" once did? Either you are messing with everybody with this thread, or you had no business making many of the claims you have made in the past.

I sincerely hope you get your bicycle on the road. I wish you well. But please refrain from posting strong opinions about things you don't understand in the future. If this thread is coming from a place of truthfulness, then why should anyone take anything you say about bicycle function, design, and/or mechanical properties seriously again? And if this is indeed a troll, please stop. It is disruptive.

Happy, and safe riding. Stay healthy.
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Old 08-27-20, 02:28 PM
  #53  
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Rudi included two critical pieces of info I forgot, and I think they're worth highlighting again.

Originally Posted by rhm
If you hold your two cotters face-to-face, the threads opposed, the round sides should be parallel.
Couple juicy bits here: Cotter face angles on both cotters you're installing should match end to end, and use the method mentioned to check for approximate match. Once you get the correct file on one, you can mirror that to the other and use that method to confirm. Thus, it's not like you need to spend time on both. Get one right, mirror.

Originally Posted by rhm
Re Francophile's drawing, Remember that the spindle will rotate in the hole to fit any angle (within a certain range). In the middle drawing, the spindle will rotate a little bit counterclockwise; in the drawing on the right, it will rotate a little clockwise. After you initially tap the cotter in place, try to rotate the crank arms against one another (stomp on both pedals at once, then turn them over and stomp on them that way).
Bold-underline emphasis is mine to highlight two things.

Within a certain range is important depending on what you're working on. My unfortunate reality is, the new 'pressed' style cotters or the cheap Sunlite cotters (like this) where the end of a straight rod is smashed absolutely won't work straight out of the bin. I typically end up working on a bunch of Peugeots because there were a couple of major dealers here in Atlanta and there happen to be a lot of stock, they flip well, but they want a cut more like # 5 in this picture, although you can get away with a face like # 6 of that same pic. Compare the 1st link with the 2nd. Not to say it's impossible, but I have better luck filing on the newfangled cotters.

But the most important tidbit here is I should've mentioned the trick about wiggling the crankarm before pressing to get the cotter and spindle jibing with one another, as firmly as possible. Rudi is right, looking at my pic, it looks like someone could slightly rotate the arm to get some more 'face time' between the cotter and spindle, but in both situations, you'll still be cutting into the cotter to some degree. I also failed to mention cotters come in variable lengths, and you can also see cutting or pinching if your cotter is longer than your installation, even if it's perfect. But if you filed it, you should clearly see some evidence where the faces were pressing together when you installed it.
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Old 08-27-20, 02:45 PM
  #54  
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Just to drill the point home, and maybe it's another reason to hate on French stuff for some people, I dunno. Check out the following cotters.

# 1 is the product Sunlite makes, I presume it's poured? Maybe it's ground and shuffled in a bin together to smooth it out. Dunno.
# 2 is the typical pinched-end cotter you get out of China.
# 3-5 are varying machined, pre-filed cotters.

I've typically found style of # 4 are a direct drop-in fit for me on many cottered French bikes. Something like # 5 work a lot of times without filing anything too. Something like # 3, 2 or 1 will take filing every time, else the blunt end of the cotter is sticking out too far and I'm typically not getting seated very well. That's not to say the angle is wrong, it could be 100% correct, I have a bag of those shown in # 3 and the angle is perfect, but there's too much material, and the cotter won't press in far enough for my taste.

Not sure this really helps at all, but ...

.
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Old 08-27-20, 03:10 PM
  #55  
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^^ That's right, the cotters I work with are like #3 , and usually I have to file them to engage deeper but without changing the angle.
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Old 08-27-20, 04:29 PM
  #56  
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Originally Posted by BFisher
I'm kind of at a loss for words. This is really pretty simple. Wherever there is a mark on the sharpied surface, that will tell you whether your angle is too shallow or too steep.

I honestly am struggling to believe that this thread isn't a troll. You have posted many times in the past about framebuilding techniques, and why a truck mechanic shouldn't work on a bicycle, and how Shimano doesn't understand why the old ways worked. Yet you can't grasp the mechanical theory of a bench vise? You can't understand installing pins that "schoolboys" once did? Either you are messing with everybody with this thread, or you had no business making many of the claims you have made in the past.

I sincerely hope you get your bicycle on the road. I wish you well. But please refrain from posting strong opinions about things you don't understand in the future. If this thread is coming from a place of truthfulness, then why should anyone take anything you say about bicycle function, design, and/or mechanical properties seriously again? And if this is indeed a troll, please stop. It is disruptive.

Happy, and safe riding. Stay healthy.
I ride my bike. I ride it a lot. Have done so for a very long time.

When I don’t know how something works I take it to a mechanic. The mechanics are gone.

Yesterday I had a forty minute tutorial with a plumber/luthier who taught me how to use a file and create a flat surface. He said I was the worst student he had ever had. Also almost lost patience with how I was treating his vise and would have tossed me out of the shop if I had not known him forty years.

Two of the commenters above have done work for me. Rudi does superlative work. I would not attempt to do work on a saddle if Rudi were available. The other commenter simply destroyed an extremely rare piece of equipment. Rare as in only a few hundred ever made and nothing at all similar made since. And something really useful for those who need it. That party shall not be named.

My plumber/luthier friend is fairly distinguished. He designed the new waterworks here in my town. All the instruments he makes are concert grade. The very first instrument he made was concert grade. He also did a bit of bike racing in distant past. His opinion of bicycle cotters is they are plain difficult. I drink his water every day, as do half a million other people. He say cotters are hard. You say it is simple. I will believe the guy I have known forty years.

The bike in question was purchased in 2004 and has been used minimum of 200 days a year ever since. Often two and three trips a day. I am riding around town with one crank arm.

The shop space where I just learned how to file and got remedial instruction in vise operation is also where CRC of A used to stay when they were in Chicago. John Howard just about lived there. It would be possible to know rather a lot about bicycles and not meet your criteria for being allowed to breathe.
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Old 08-27-20, 04:45 PM
  #57  
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Thank you Rudi.

Thank you francophile.

I have to take a break from this. Will follow up on all you have posted but just have to have a break.
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Old 08-27-20, 05:57 PM
  #58  
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
. Still no clue at all what the shape of the cotter pin should be. How steep is the taper? How deep is the cut? No one seems to know.

.
...this might seem counter-intuitive, but the simplest thing to do in your situation (one arm still on the bike and working well, the other pin lost by the bike shop you took it to for repair), is to rremove the cotter that is still in place and use it as your profile model. This is what I would do, but cotters seem mostly to come out OK for me.
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Old 08-27-20, 07:53 PM
  #59  
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Or just get two matched cotters?
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Old 08-28-20, 07:24 AM
  #60  
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Originally Posted by 3alarmer
...this might seem counter-intuitive, but the simplest thing to do in your situation (one arm still on the bike and working well, the other pin lost by the bike shop you took it to for repair), is to rremove the cotter that is still in place and use it as your profile model. This is what I would do, but cotters seem mostly to come out OK for me.
The pin that is still working was installed with a Var7 and is thus no guide.

I believe you when you say cotters come out OK for you. It was the overwhelmingly dominant system for over 80 years, ordinary people must have had success with it. Something is in the way of easy resolution and it is probably me. Getting from A to B has been strange.
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Old 08-28-20, 07:42 AM
  #61  
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Originally Posted by francophile
Think of cotters as a game. To win the game, you need as much of the filed face of the cotter to come in contact with the flat face of the spindle as possible. The more surface area of each flat you have in contact, the more chance you'll have of success and thousands of miles of creak-free, loose-free riding. If you're seeing a significant linear gouge, you're not engaging the flats well enough, deep gouge means you're catching the edge of the spindle before the flats can engage nicely, or after you're too far past engaging.

You need to press or punch in the cotter enough to see where you're making contact, then adjust the angle of the cotter so the flats match. Sometimes you'll get lucky and you'll get good engagement without touching a file - it happens! But more often than not, especially with the French stuff I'm wont to work on, I'm filing a good bit of the face.

Best I can do is throw together a picture to visualize it. Blue line is where you're meeting the spindle. You want contact flushly across the face for a long blue line, engaging across a lot of the surface. If your angle isn't steep enough to meet the face, you'll gouge at the blunt end. If you over-file, you'll gouge a line into the threaded end. It's that simple. File things flatter on the end you're gouging, or if you're gouging on the threaded side, you might've over-filed already (it depends on how much blunt end is exposed after a full press!)

Make any more sense? Just make sure you file evenly, flatly, because the spindle face should be perfectly flat also, you want flat to flat.

The gouges have mostly been towards the top, so that would be underfiled. Some are just about in middle. No rhyme or reason I can see for why it moves so much. It all feels like I am trying to do detail work with a shotgun. Next step will be to do a full Peugeot cut. Already the threads completely out of the hole. With washers there would be a little more adjustment, not a whole lot.

Both LBS attempts the gouge was all the way to top, engaging only 1mm of taper.

Test fitting and removing there is no gouge. Sharpie marks are a smear. To get gouges the bike must be ridden. Sometimes that is five miles, more often it takes a couple hundred meters.
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Old 08-28-20, 07:50 AM
  #62  
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Originally Posted by francophile
Just to drill the point home, and maybe it's another reason to hate on French stuff for some people, I dunno. Check out the following cotters.

# 1 is the product Sunlite makes, I presume it's poured? Maybe it's ground and shuffled in a bin together to smooth it out. Dunno.
# 2 is the typical pinched-end cotter you get out of China.
# 3-5 are varying machined, pre-filed cotters.

I've typically found style of # 4 are a direct drop-in fit for me on many cottered French bikes. Something like # 5 work a lot of times without filing anything too. Something like # 3, 2 or 1 will take filing every time, else the blunt end of the cotter is sticking out too far and I'm typically not getting seated very well. That's not to say the angle is wrong, it could be 100% correct, I have a bag of those shown in # 3 and the angle is perfect, but there's too much material, and the cotter won't press in far enough for my taste.

Not sure this really helps at all, but ...

.
The pins I have are like #1 and I believe they are Sunlite. Current production the cut is even shorter. I have cut some back to roughly your #3 . Not even sure if they can be cut to look like 4. As in another reply as they get cut down the pin is starting to go all the way through the the crank arm.

The failed original pin, which did give a few thousand miles of service, was the same as what I am playing with.
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Old 08-28-20, 08:36 AM
  #63  
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
Next step will be to do a full Peugeot cut. Already the threads completely out of the hole. With washers there would be a little more adjustment, not a whole lot.

.
...if the threads are already "all the way out of the hole", a full cut is going in the wrong direction. I know you are certain that (mm is the correct cotter for this application, but are you certain that 9mm is the correct cotter for your application ? If you don't have one of those Park spoke ruler gauges with the go/no go holes for cotters, you can use your crank arm as a gauge. With it off the bike, the uncut top portion of the cotter should just snugly fill the hole. If it shakes around in there, your cotter is too small. Or you can measure the one installed in the working arm at the top, with a vernier caliper.
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Old 08-28-20, 09:21 AM
  #64  
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Originally Posted by rhm
Yes, I knew your bikes are old and racy and have thin cranks; hence my comment!



The angle of the taper doesn't matter, as long as both cotters have the same angle. Whatever angle you have, the spindle will rotate to accomodate it. A shallow angle will be stronger, but will require more force to wedge it in place.

Put the cotter through the little hole in the crank arm, without the spindle in place, and push it down to where it looks right, with about the same amount protruding on both sides; now look through the bigger hole and look at the tapered surface from the side. Compare the empty space to the shape of the spindle. You should be able to get a pretty good idea of how thick the cotter should be.

If you hold your two cotters face-to-face, the threads opposed, the round sides should be parallel.



Re Francophile's drawing, Remember that the spindle will rotate in the hole to fit any angle (within a certain range). In the middle drawing, the spindle will rotate a little bit counterclockwise; in the drawing on the right, it will rotate a little clockwise. After you initially tap the cotter in place, try to rotate the crank arms against one another (stomp on both pedals at once, then turn them over and stomp on them that way). Install the nut, but only finger tight. Tap the cotter again, try to move the cranks again, tap the cotter again, test to see if the nut loosened... and repeat these steps until there is no movement. When the nothing seems to move any more, tap the cotter one more time, as is you really mean it this time, and tighten the nut with a wrench. Now you "should be" all done.
OK, I eyeballed it as you say and that view does make it clear that any angle cut is going to engage the flat. Or it will if the pin will go in. When I try to visualize this and get a ‘cut here’ decision it is like doing a triple backflip with reverse twist and the same answer does not come out twice. So must think of it another way. What I can come up with is any angle works so all we are talking about is how thick or thin the cotter is. And then once getting a crank on and having it stay put is accomplished we can work on both cotters, two equal cuts, two equal angles. Making that add up to total correct clearance. But for now all I want is to get a crank to stay on. The next step is to cut the cotter real thin. Will find out what happens. It does look like the pin is going to come all the way through. May have to substitute an old Raleigh arm with a thicker head.

The part about manipulate the cranks against each other is about wiggling the wedge into place, yes? Seems reasonable.
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Old 08-28-20, 09:25 AM
  #65  
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
The pins I have are like #1 and I believe they are Sunlite. Current production the cut is even shorter. I have cut some back to roughly your #3 . Not even sure if they can be cut to look like 4. As in another reply as they get cut down the pin is starting to go all the way through the the crank arm.

The failed original pin, which did give a few thousand miles of service, was the same as what I am playing with.
63rickert, we met at a vintage backyard show-n-tell in Evanston last Spring, and we talked about Ron Boi. I had come in from Ann Arbor to participate. I was really glad to see your old Brits! I think you brought a Bates? I assume you're talking about an old British crankset. Since then I've pulled the crankset on my 1952 Rudge, since it turned very roughly. The non-drive cotter came out easily using the BikeSmithDesigns press. That tool did not fit the pin end on the drive side so well, and I didn't know the "loose nut" trick, so the press destroyed the threaded end. Subsequent hammering (the "ball-pein hammer" trick") did not do any good. Trying to drive out the cotter with a drift, a rigid block, and a light sledge also did no good. I'm really just glad the hammer did not slip and break my hand! Eventually I attacked the cotter from the round end with a series of progressively larger drills. Exhausting all my drills on handI changed to hand files, the best being round files sold for sharpening chain saw teeth - a super tool! Finally I could pry out a thin steel shell (all that was left, the last step of the extraction), revealing that my drill had taken out a little of the BB spindle! Even though I think it's a small bite, I decided to back off from reinstalling the cotters if I could.

For my reinstallation, I bought 2 pairs of English-dimensioned cotters from Mark Stonich at BikeSmithDesign. I still have one of my original cotters, in excellent condition, and you can have it if you want it. The Stonich Brit cotters look identical to the original Raleigh/Rudge cotters. I would also send you a pair of those to try. To me they do not need any filing.

I would recommend you contact Mark Stonich to talk to him about your crank and your intent to use those Sunlite cotters. To my eye they are not like my English ones or the Stonich cotters. As I said to my eye the British-style ones do not need any filing. If I was going to build them in, I would start by trying to install them "as virgin." I'll work on some pictures.

PM me if you are interested.
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Old 08-28-20, 09:42 AM
  #66  
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Originally Posted by 3alarmer
...if the threads are already "all the way out of the hole", a full cut is going in the wrong direction. I know you are certain that (mm is the correct cotter for this application, but are you certain that 9mm is the correct cotter for your application ? If you don't have one of those Park spoke ruler gauges with the go/no go holes for cotters, you can use your crank arm as a gauge. With it off the bike, the uncut top portion of the cotter should just snugly fill the hole. If it shakes around in there, your cotter is too small. Or you can measure the one installed in the working arm at the top, with a vernier caliper.
Yes, it is 9.0. The crank is early 60s Simplex French. The cotter fits smoothly through the hole. An English 9.5 does not go in the hole at all. The batch of cotters I have are 8.8 to 8.9. Diameter varies pin to pin but each pin is straight enough.

My manual skills are pathetic. No pretending otherwise. I can measure and do it a lot. Only rarely make a measurement error and still measure everything at least 3 times.

My luthier friend measured the hole with a gauge from my dreams and says it is still round, not oval. Same for the bore hole where the spindle goes.
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Old 08-28-20, 10:05 AM
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
............My plumber/luthier friend is fairly distinguished. .
as any plumber/luthier would be...
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Old 08-28-20, 10:09 AM
  #68  
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Originally Posted by Road Fan
63rickert, we met at a vintage backyard show-n-tell in Evanston last Spring, and we talked about Ron Boi. I had come in from Ann Arbor to participate. I was really glad to see your old Brits! I think you brought a Bates? I assume you're talking about an old British crankset. Since then I've pulled the crankset on my 1952 Rudge, since it turned very roughly. The non-drive cotter came out easily using the BikeSmithDesigns press. That tool did not fit the pin end on the drive side so well, and I didn't know the "loose nut" trick, so the press destroyed the threaded end. Subsequent hammering (the "ball-pein hammer" trick") did not do any good. Trying to drive out the cotter with a drift, a rigid block, and a light sledge also did no good. I'm really just glad the hammer did not slip and break my hand! Eventually I attacked the cotter from the round end with a series of progressively larger drills. Exhausting all my drills on handI changed to hand files, the best being round files sold for sharpening chain saw teeth - a super tool! Finally I could pry out a thin steel shell (all that was left, the last step of the extraction), revealing that my drill had taken out a little of the BB spindle! Even though I think it's a small bite, I decided to back off from reinstalling the cotters if I could.
...just for future reference, once you drill out the portion of the threaded end down to where it is about even with the spindle top (or a little bit above), it is considerably easier to dump in a good portion of penetrating oil, wait a little while while you have some coffee, and the insert a pin punch into the hole, support the spindle and crank arm on something like a piece of plumbing pipe that goes down to the ground, and strike the end of the pin punch with a large cross pein hammer or a dead blow hammer. The remaining end of the cotter will come out nicely, you don't ruin your drill bit on the hardened spindle, and you can use the remaining cotter end for a key fob.

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Old 08-28-20, 10:17 AM
  #69  
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Originally Posted by Road Fan
...

For my reinstallation, I bought 2 pairs of English-dimensioned cotters from Mark Stonich at BikeSmithDesign. I still have one of my original cotters, in excellent condition, and you can have it if you want it. The Stonich Brit cotters look identical to the original Raleigh/Rudge cotters. I would also send you a pair of those to try. To me they do not need any filing.

I would recommend you contact Mark Stonich to talk to him about your crank and your intent to use those Sunlite cotters. To my eye they are not like my English ones or the Stonich cotters. As I said to my eye the British-style ones do not need any filing. If I was going to build them in, I would start by trying to install them "as virgin." I'll work on some pictures.

PM me if you are interested.
...those are doubtful, due to the unique nature of all things French.

Replacement cotters that fit well are not always easy to find. There is very limited interchangeability. The diameter of the round part of the cotter tends to be standardized according to nationality. Most use 9.5 mm, including British, Asian and most German bicycles. French and Italian bicycles used 9 mm, or sometimes 8.5 mm.
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Old 08-28-20, 11:20 AM
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Originally Posted by Road Fan
63rickert, we met at a vintage backyard show-n-tell in Evanston last Spring, and we talked about Ron Boi. I had come in from Ann Arbor to participate. I was really glad to see your old Brits! I think you brought a Bates? I assume you're talking about an old British crankset. Since then I've pulled the crankset on my 1952 Rudge, since it turned very roughly. The non-drive cotter came out easily using the BikeSmithDesigns press. That tool did not fit the pin end on the drive side so well, and I didn't know the "loose nut" trick, so the press destroyed the threaded end. Subsequent hammering (the "ball-pein hammer" trick") did not do any good. Trying to drive out the cotter with a drift, a rigid block, and a light sledge also did no good. I'm really just glad the hammer did not slip and break my hand! Eventually I attacked the cotter from the round end with a series of progressively larger drills. Exhausting all my drills on handI changed to hand files, the best being round files sold for sharpening chain saw teeth - a super tool! Finally I could pry out a thin steel shell (all that was left, the last step of the extraction), revealing that my drill had taken out a little of the BB spindle! Even though I think it's a small bite, I decided to back off from reinstalling the cotters if I could.

For my reinstallation, I bought 2 pairs of English-dimensioned cotters from Mark Stonich at BikeSmithDesign. I still have one of my original cotters, in excellent condition, and you can have it if you want it. The Stonich Brit cotters look identical to the original Raleigh/Rudge cotters. I would also send you a pair of those to try. To me they do not need any filing.

I would recommend you contact Mark Stonich to talk to him about your crank and your intent to use those Sunlite cotters. To my eye they are not like my English ones or the Stonich cotters. As I said to my eye the British-style ones do not need any filing. If I was going to build them in, I would start by trying to install them "as virgin." I'll work on some pictures.

PM me if you are interested.
That sounds at least as slick as many of my projects. Will guess 50 or 60 hours have now been spent on this single cotter pin. Which is why all these posts do not seem wholly unreasonable. Though it would be quicker to drive to Atlanta and watch Francophile do it.

It is 9.0. Thanks anyway. The Bates you saw has Stronglight cranks with English market 9.5. Did just check those and the nuts are very solid. The Bates is due for a BB grease, may never happen.

The bike I am playing with has a 74mm BB which is why I’ve not thrown in the towel yet. May yet be easier to cut the BB shell and put in a loose Campagnolo. The huge advantage of Campagnolo was it was always intended for race mechanics in a hurry, thus it was totally serviceable by most owners. Bike shops could make mistakes but they had to try.
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Old 08-28-20, 06:14 PM
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I wish i had stopped in for a visit when i drove through your area a couple weeks ago, but i didn't know the trouble these cotters were giving you. First time i'd been in Chicagoland since 1986!
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Old 08-28-20, 08:09 PM
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Originally Posted by 3alarmer
...those are doubtful, due to the unique nature of all things French.
Agreed, I thought he had English, at first.
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Old 08-28-20, 08:30 PM
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
That sounds at least as slick as many of my projects. Will guess 50 or 60 hours have now been spent on this single cotter pin. Which is why all these posts do not seem wholly unreasonable. Though it would be quicker to drive to Atlanta and watch Francophile do it.

It is 9.0. Thanks anyway. The Bates you saw has Stronglight cranks with English market 9.5. Did just check those and the nuts are very solid. The Bates is due for a BB grease, may never happen.

The bike I am playing with has a 74mm BB which is why I’ve not thrown in the towel yet. May yet be easier to cut the BB shell and put in a loose Campagnolo. The huge advantage of Campagnolo was it was always intended for race mechanics in a hurry, thus it was totally serviceable by most owners. Bike shops could make mistakes but they had to try.
I wouldn't call it slick, it was about 25 hours of work! But I didn't solve the problem you have, I removed the cotter, not installed it.

What Chicago shops have you been to with this problem? My childhood LBS is still there, Gary's Bike Shop on North Clark between Granville and Devon avenue. The owner when I was a kid is long deceased, but his BSA racing bike is still on the wall and his daughter was running the store. It started in 1948 and I knew it since about 1962. It still looks like 1948. There's a decent chance they know this problem. Likewise Roberts Cycles on North Clark near Pratt or Morse. I worked there very briefly in the late '60s. The current owner learned from the guy who I worked for - I should have stayed and "studied."

In what was called Newtown there is still Cycle Smithy - store is old but I don't know about the staff. Same for Turin Cycle Coop, on either Damen or Sheridan somewhere in the Montrose or Irving Park Road area. Up north (Northbrook?) is George Garner Cyclery, and in Lake Forest there might still be Kiddle's. Plus there are the Kozy shops, though I don't know them very well.
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Old 08-28-20, 08:46 PM
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Originally Posted by 63rickert
OK, I eyeballed it as you say and that view does make it clear that any angle cut is going to engage the flat.
This isn't necessarily true. You have a round hole with a wall that is perpendicular to the crank arm and will never change. That uncut side of the cotter is forced to cradle flush against the wall of that round hole in the crank arm. This makes the angle of the cut side exceptionally important, it's the one thing you can change assuming the diameter of your cotter matches the diameter of the hole in the crank. This is also why it's critical to use the correct diameter of cotter respective to your crank arm.

Essentially, the uncut side must be able to snugly fit flush in the round while the cut side marries nicely to the flat face of the spindle. You cannot change the uncut side of the cotter, and this is why getting the correct diameter of cotter is fairly critical. The only part you have control over is A) ensuring the filed side of the cotter is able to marry to the flat of the spindle while B) the diameter of the cotter is able to cradle snugly to the diameter of the hole in your crank, and C) you wiggle the crank arm to settle the cotter nicely before you press it in with enough force it firmly wedges into place to a level that's greater than the force your legs can crank it out.

Oh - and actually - you also need to be thoughtful about which side the NUT is on. But I've not found nor seen evidence to say definitively which way the nut should go. I make sure the blunt end of the cotter is UP when the crank arm for that side is forward, just so there's less risk if it snagging clothing..

I know this probably makes it sound complicated but there's a notable amount of wiggle room available to screw up. If you respect the cotter diameter, respect the face, and jostle the crank enough to settle it altogether before pressing with adequate force, you should have no problem for hundreds or thousands of miles.

Let me ask you something: What crank are you using? Have you taken a well-calibrated digital caliper to the hole in the crankarm? Have you taken a digital caliper to the cotter? Are the outer diameter of the spindle and the inner diameter of the crankarm the same within a fraction? Just asking the obvious, because this shouldn't technically be this difficult unless you're using the wrong diameter cotter, or this crank wasn't intended for that spindle. It's the only thing making sense to me, as a masochistic MF who actually gets off on working with cottered cranks.
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Old 08-28-20, 08:52 PM
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Originally Posted by rhm
I wish i had stopped in for a visit when i drove through your area a couple weeks ago, but i didn't know the trouble these cotters were giving you. First time i'd been in Chicagoland since 1986!
Likewise, this is one of those cases where I'm pissed the OP doesn't live closer. I would literally drive two hours in both directions to jump in on this one just to solve the problem and maybe teach a new talent at the same time! I'm going to need to stop replying. Not sure words are helping. I suspect this is a problem I could solve with 5-10 minutes of action tops with my VAR press and an assortment of cotters to choose from. Aaaaargggh!
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