About a year ago I picked up a 1965 Tigra Professional. It came with Durax-Special Courses steel cranks and a Campagnolo cottered bottom bracket.
I ran into the same problem but more so. For starters I couldn't get the cotter out of the left side crank arm even with one of the big old VAR cotter presses. The drive side cotter came out OK so I pulled the adjustable cup with the crank arm and spindle attached.
The dilemma: was the fixed cup LH or RH threads. After several tries both ways with a VAR fixed cup tool, I chose not to risk damaging anything and left it in place.
Cleaning and repacking the BB was a chore but it will never get used enough by me to require any future maintenance.
BTW, Dale, good idea. I'll have to remember that trick if I ever run across the problem again.
Chas. Colerich Oakland, CA USA
jim abt wrote:
> Hi all: I have a Tigra bike made in Switzerland that has a serious tight bottom bracket bearing cup on the drive side. The thing really needs to come out because the overhaul is absolutely necassary. The model year is a 1977 I beleive and the model name is Professional. The serial # is 121017 stamped on the bottom of the shell and there is a #60 stamped on the nondrive side as well as a #46 stamped on the drive side on the bottom of the shell. The bottom bracket is a Shimano and the cup is marked with the 35 x P1 and there is an "A1" also stamped on it. I have been cranking on this sucker assuming that it should be a Swiss thread since it is manufactured there. But what a dumbass I could be after finding out that it could very well be French threaded and I should be going in the other direction (counterclokwise) to remove it. The cup is on tighter than tight to begin with now after I could have been forcing the wrong direction it is even tighter yet, I am afraid.
>
> I have been trying to find out from the archives without any luck what direction I should have the leverage on. I need your help. I have experience removing these but I am so use to the Japanese models with ISO threads that I feel slightly retarded when it comes to the various Euro models. Why could they not be standard?!! I do not need any help in how to other than that. Thanks
>
> Jim Abt
> Wausau, Wi. USA