French Bottom bracket

P

playford

Retro Guru
anyone know where you can source a french bottom bracket for reasonable money at the minute, for my novy build?

cant see any velo orange ones on freshtripe and phil woods seem a bit spendy.

Trying to avoid a threadless BB.

Measured shell width for novy - 73mm and cottered spindle length seems to be 138mm.

ermmm. bit melted with this as all the french ones listed seem to be 68mm and 110m.
 
When Cinelli Super Corsa arrived about 1960 we had the choice (fortunately) of only 2 decent chainsets, 49D/TA or campagnolo. The SC had a 74mm width, our chainsets were only available 68mm. So I softened an old adjustable cup, filed a hex in the centre, and used this as a guide to cut 3mm off each side.
This at the time was the only way. It may not be possible on your frame, or you may not feel like ruining it, but 50 years ago we had to find practical solutions.
 
wouldn't the threading still be off?

sounds a bit scary anyway, If it comes to that I'll get a threadless.
 
50 years ago all these expensive facing tools did not exist. All the new Cinelli SC's I sold had this treatment. The wider bottom bracket was a good theory, with the weight on the bearings lessened being further apart, but no-one wanted a cottered chainset on a bike in the £70 / £80 price range.
Never any problems, why should it affect the threading? You know the French and Italian threads then were both RH, although different diameters.
 
I thought your problem was the width, but you should be able to have the adjusting cup 1mm further out if that helps. I was in the old days of 24 tpi and metric diameters. Hope you get it right.
 
its the french threading, its a different TPI no?

the problem I also had is when I look up the typical french sizing my BB is too big.
 
Is it 35mm x 1mm?
All my stuff now is British fitting, apart from the 3 old Italian bikes, which are 36mm x 24TPI. Thats enough, but they'll never wear out at the present rate of use.
 
yep 35 x 1 I think, on the verge of just getting the velo orange threadless and calling it a day! £45 tho!

would a pic of the cups help?
 
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