At 1:23 PM -0500 2/14/10, Roman Stankus wrote:
>When I purchased some TA chainrings from Mike Barry as he was closing out
>his stock of TA rings, I asked him about this same question. I was going to
>go from a Campy NR/SR double to a TA cyclotouriste double and he said it
>would work fine to just use the current campy BB/axle setup (offset 114.5mm
>axle). I haven't set that up yet to know if it works first hand, but knowing
>Mike's experienec with these matters, I trust it will. Hope this helps in
>the mix.
I have tried combining a Campagnolo BB spindle and a TA/Stronglight crank, and it worked only in one special case. I have one Campy NR spindle that has a bigger taper, and the TA/Stronglight cranks fit just fine. (Ernest Csuka of Cycles Alex Singer was surprised, as he had told me that this would NOT work.)
I tried to replicate this on another bike, and no luck. It appears that Ernest Csuka was right, after all. All the other NR spindles I tried had tapers that were a bit thinner, and the cranks slid all the way onto the taper, leaving nothing for tightening them. It appears that my thicker spindle was an outlier...
Campy NR cranks and BBs are close to ISO taper, whereas TA and Stronglight are JIS (which really should be called French - the Japanese copied the French tapers and then made it their standard).
Of course, good French-threaded BBs are harder to find these days. It would be lovely if one could combine the superb quality of the Campy NR bottom brackets with the light weight and more reasonable gear ratios of the TA cranks. (TA bottom brackets weren't as good as Campagnolo...)
If you have BSC or Italian threading, you have more BB options. Phil Wood still offers French bottom brackets, if you just want to ride the bike.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com