Made some progress on the Raleigh hybrid single speed conversion build.
It originally had a set of Shimano BioPace cranks with a triple chainring. I'm not using those, and am swapping them out for a set of Shimano 600ex arabesque cranks.
HOWEVER...
The bottom bracket spindle is the wrong length (too long on drive side) and my chainline will be too crooked to be reliable.
And the spindle is totally roached. The drive side bearing race is all chewed up. Because the drive side bearings only exist as stabby bits of shrapnel.
Surprisingly i don't have any more looseball bottom brackets in my pile of parts so the drive side bb cup needs to come out so it can be replaced by a cheap cartridge unit.
But it is stuck haaaaaaaaaaard. And the flats on it are too thin for me to effectively get my bigger wrenches on it.
Sheldon Brown's website has a
guide for just this.
I ended up buying a 5/8-inch 18 TPI hex bolt 1 1/2inches long, with a nut, a big flat washer, and four lockwashers. Bolt and lockwashers go inside the bb shell, threaded part of bolt sticks out thru the fixed cup, flat washer and nut go on outside.
Since it is an English threaded bb, tightening the nut will clamp down on the fixed cup and eventually break it loose.
Good thing I got it out, the bearing races in the fixed cup were all chewed up too. I'm guessing someone put the bearing cage in backwards and then rode it for several years.
So now I need to figure out which cartridge bottom bracket to get that will result in a reasonable chainline.
I have a 39t chainring for the cranks I'm thinking of using but may pick up a different one.