[CR]Chater Lea quest

(Example: Framebuilding:Tubing:Falck)

From: <RDF1249@aol.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 00:01:23 EST
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: [CR]Chater Lea quest

My Claud Butler track frame has a Chater Lea BB in it. I have a nice light Durax Super Course steel crank with a Chater Lea chainring on it that I was going to use, but the spindle is about 5 mm too short on the right side. Anyone have a Chater Lea spindle that is about 124-125mm wide, offset 5mm to the right? I didn't know until I took it apart that the Chater Lea BB takes 5/16" balls so of course the spindle has to match, and the cups have a unique thread of 1.45" x 26tpi. So I guess I am stuck with this as nothing else will work in the frame except perhaps Phil Wood with CL rings and my TA track crank. Alternatively, anyone have a Chater Lea crankset or preferably a pair of crankarms that they would trade/sell? I assume that a Chater Lea crank would fit on this spindle as I don't know what else would. The chainring I have is quite nice.

By the way, I just built up the front wheel for this bike. I have a pair of Harden high flange double fixed hubs and a matching pair (32/40 hole) of Banfi-Canti (Italian) rims. The rims are unique in that they are solid, and only about 3/16" thick! Very light as such. They were quite flexy unbuilt since they have no cross section, but built up the wheel seems very solid and round. The spokes will pull through those thin hub flanges long before they would pull through the rims. The front wheel weighs 742g. Pretty amazing.

Bob Freeman
Seattle