Sugino made steel cotterless cranks by the thousands for a low level Fuji. Iver Johnson made them for perhaps 10 years either side of 1915. They are only cotterless on one side, and the tapers are three sided.
Joe Bender-Zanoni Great Notch, NJ
Harvey Sachs wrote:
> I'm sure that Hilary inadvertently overlooked a couple of steel
> cotterless cranks that are probably still more common than the 49a. At
> least, I've seen them, and I've never seen a 49a.
>
> The first example is the lovely and graceful 3-arm Campagnolo, which I
> think is called the "Gran Sport." Real eye-candy, forged, with
> aluminum rings. Although the mental gears are not spinning freely
> this afternoon, I also remember a fairly down-market Nervar steel
> cotterless that came on some Raleigh Super Courses. But this is just a
> clarification, and doesn't detract from HIlary's message.
>
> harvey sachs
> mcLean va
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Historically riders and manufacturers considered Q-factor (what they
> called tread) to be important back in the 1890s... However I have not
> seen any reference since to anything to do with Q-factor in the cycling
> press until the late 1980s. I have hundreds of copies of technical
> articles from Cycling magazine and the CTC Gazette from 1900 to the
> 1960s. It is undoubtedly true that steel cottered cranks nearly always
> have a narrower Q-factor than cotterless cranks. Steel cotterless cranks
> are very rare (the Stronglight 49A is almost certainly the most common
> and it is a rare crank...). But I am almost certain that 49As have an
> identical Q-factor to 49Ds and in any case the Q-factor of 49D, 57/63,
> TA and Campagnolo Record are all low compared to later cranks from the
> major manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s. <snip>