"Fil" does mean thread, so 20 F would mean 20 TPI. As to Lyotard, you ma ybe put it a bit too kindly. I have a lot of Lyotards and like them, but the truth is they are just highly inconsistent in their actual thread diam eters. I posted a while back about taking a reasonable number of Lyotard pedals, maybe a dozen, and measuring the actual thread diameters. They spanned the range from nominal French to nominal English, with several some where in the middle. About all one could assume from the markings was th at those marked as French (D&G) were probably slightly statistically closer to the nominal French diameter than those marked as English (R&L). But not by much. So many, as you say, would work with either French or Engli sh cranks. It was actually TA who a few years ago deliberately designed pedals with a diameter about half way between French and English. They m arked them as English/ISO, but put a little slip of paper in the box statin g (in French of course) that they would work with both ISO and metric cranks . I have a couple of pars of those, so I know this first hand. So wh at TA did by design, Lyotard did by accident. Which tells you a lot abou t both companies.
This doesn't really address the question of modern pedals being tight in En glish Stronglight cranks, however, as I don't believe Stronglight threads v aries nearly as much as Lyotard.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
From: John Thompson <johndthompson@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [CR]French Threading To: "John Hurley" <JHurley@jdabrams.com> Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 4:36 PM
John Hurley wrote:
> I've been assuming my Stronglight Model 99 crankset was threaded for
> French pedals and only just realized they're 9/16 x 20, standard
English
> thread. However, when trying a modern pedal, it doesn't seem to want
to
> go in. I had noticed this before, which kept me thinking they were
> French. The cranks are plainly marked 9/16 x 20 F. What does the
"F"
> stand for?
"Fil" I believe, which means "thread."
> Did the French have their own version of standard thread??
In a manner of speaking... :-)
Lyotard in particular was well known for producing pedals that could be used in either English or metric arms, regardless of how the pedals were marked.
--
-John Thompson (john@os2.dhs.org)
Appleton WI USA