I believe you did the right thing. Screwing the cups in the correct way moved the metal around. Re-tapping would have removed metal, so that should only be a last resort before going to a different type of BB.
-- John Betmanis Woodstock, Ontario Canada
Carb7008@cs.com wrote:
> Well, I removed BB of this '71 Paramount that had fixed-cup on left and adj
> on right. They came off with appropriate amount of torque and proper cup
> direction. I found the BB-shell (non-Nervex, Prugnat?) threads
> buggered-up/partially stripped, so now a decision: I could reinstall backwards, as found,
> even though I won't do that; re-tap correctly in english and hope there's
> enough meat to hold; or re-tap to italian.
>
> My apologies to Schwinn for initially thinking they tapped the BB
> backwards.
>
> A shake of my head to the individual who installed the cups backwards...I
> would not have imagined this was even possible!
>
> Jack Romans
> Sacramento, California
>
> EPILOG:
>
> Following some CR-listers suggestions for an alternative method, I cleaned
> BB threads and properly re-installed cups. Due to thread damage, the
> biggest problem encountered was starting the cups square with the BB, esp adj cup
> in my case. Once this was accomplished, running cups in-and-out a few times
> while cleaning-out steel splinters in-between did the trick. I think that
> if I had attemped to re-tap as I originally thought, it might have been very
> difficult to keep my taps square which would have resulted in further
> damage. If I ever get the chance to use my expensive BB taps, I'll be especially
> wary of crossed starts!
>
> Jack Romans
> Sacramento, California