Re: [CR]Campag Spindle Length: "Pre" Bot Bkt vs. "Post" Cranks ?

Richard,
    I may miss a fact or 2 on this important subject, but - barring typographical errors - the gist of what I write should be correct. In any event, I understand that your explanation was not 100% straight, because the whole topic is a bit weird. It is difficult to convey things properly in just one (illustration-less) email.
     I'll start with this, though, and it's an important point. Let's see how I do without an illustration: the TOTAL LENGTH of the spindles to be used with rifled cups and plain cups is the same. The difference, is with the distance between the shoulders of the bearing races machined on the spindle. This is because the rifled cups are "thick wall" (Nuovo Record type) and the plain cups are thin walled (Gran Sport type).
     Campagnolo didn't make this thing easy. I.e. they stamped the same size designations on many spindles, regardless of whether they were meant for thin, or thick wall cups. Still, there were many years during which the difference was obvious. That is, there was a period in which spindles meant for thin wall cups were blackened, and the spindles meant for thick wall cups were chrome colored. (There were still exceptions, like the spindles meant for triple cranksets, but those were much longer than the other spindles, hence a bit more obvious.)
    So... irrespective of cup thikness, it sounds as though you need the longer spindle for your crankset. That would be the 115mm spindle. Note that this is not the same as the symetrical 115mm spindle used with the current, cartidge BB, but that's another story.
     Now for a word on the distance between the bearing race shoulders on the spindles. Spindles meant for thick wall cups have a bearing shoulder spacing of about 49.5 mm (BSC/French) or
   51.5 (Italian). For spindles meant to be used with thin walled cups, add 5mm to those distances. This is measured at the top (inner) edges of the two ground bearing surfaces of the spindle.
     Note that there are also situations in which you can get away with mixing spindle/cup-wall types, especially in cases where the BB shell is not standard. By "standard" I mean 68mm for a BSC/French/Swiss shell, or 70mm for Italian. BTW, there are some older Italian BBs - for shells that measure 73mm or 74mm wide. I don't know anything about those, other than what I've read on the CR list, although I'm _guessing_ they used thin wall cups. Actually, I no doubt worked on a couple, but was too ignorant atthe time to recognize the differences. There is also the issue of interchangeability between the older track spindles and the modern Chorus/Athena stuff. That, is a topic for another evening and another glass of wine. Plus, if you actually care to delve into that level of esoterica, I think you can find discussions of it in the archives from exactly 1 year ago!
       Good luck!
       Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia (USA)