Although steel cottered-cranks need no defense by me, this is "Classic Rendezvous" is it not?
Many fine pre-bikeboom machines came with beautiful cottered cranks....including bikes of premo tubing, with or without fancy-cut lugs. I find the slender, wispy and imaginative designs and usually stunning chrome-plating to be a more elegant look in keeping with vintage iron. Rather than turning-up my nose at cottered-cranks, I immediately check for OTHER signs of quality since the bike is most likely an old one.
So, when your soul-less aluminum cranks with with beer-can shim tapers are trash, hairline cracks hide from the eye but not from the mind and chainwheel teeth are reduced to the occasional nub, my cottered-cranks will still look and function as new.
Jack Romans
feining insult and outrage from
Sacramento, California