Someone, can't remember who now, had asked me to check the Deore crank I recently bought on eBay to see if TA chanirings will fit. Now that I've received it, I can report that TA rings fit perfectly. In fact, I've installed a TA triple 52-46-36 combo on the Deore arms. Even though the Deore large ring has five arms to TA's six, the five bolt holes in the right arm itself are exactly the same spacing as TA (and Stronglight 49). Of course you have to use a complete set of TA rings, not just the outer or inner, like using TA rings with Stronglight 49 arms. The Deore bolts for attaching the outer ring to the arms work also, buy you have to use the TA nuts on them. This is because the Deore nuts are keyed to match small keyways in the bolt holes in the Deore large ring. Actually this is a better design than TA, as it keeps the nuts from rotating when tightening or removing the bolts.
Evidently, the original Deore outer ring came in two versions. One supposedly had a 110 inner ring bolt circle and perhaps drillings for a third ring. The one I have, unfortunately, has a 130 BCD inner circle, the same as Dura Ace. This version seems rather pointless, as it defeats the purpose of the small crankarm BCD, which is to allow a wide range of rings. Of course, the same was true of Stronglight 49, Zeus Competition and even one model of TA outer rings, but those were first introduced before the companies offered a separate model of racing crankarms. Odd Deore would offer such a setup when Dura Ace was already well established. But I guess since they were copying a French design they figured they'd copy the twisted logic so often associated with things French.
Don't suppose anyone has for sale a Deore outer ring with the smaller inner bolt circle?
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Houston, TX