![]() Small Ads - For Sale, Wanted, Swaps, Free, etc.↳ Proposed Membership Changes - Discussion.↳ Cycling UK Member Groups and Affiliates.↳ Cycling Goods & Services - Your Reviews.↳ Racing, Olympics, TdF, Competitive cycling. ![]() ![]() It must be 50 years since I did battle with a cotterpin - thank goodness.Ĭotterless cranks are one of the best improvements ever. Commonly used now to retain thermostat phials in pockets, or in the end of a clevis pin used to retain shackles on cables etc. To be honest, after some hard, salty winters the cotter was stuck so well that I resorted to a hammer with nothing covering the end of the cotter, and whacked it with all my might! That used to destroy the cotterpin of course, and I had to go round to Clem's again to ask him to file me another pair. Cotter pins are what you would put through the hole in a bolt to lock a castellated nut, or just to stop a standard nut unscrewing, also referred to as split pins. Sometimes the threads would strip and he'd have to revert to the wooden mallet method that he'd taught me. That's a fiddle to support the bike, but you can do damage otherwise.Ĭlem never had a bike-stand or a proprietary tool for getting cotters out, but he never seemed to have any trouble - he'd made some sort of a contraption for himself that would use unscrewing of the cotterpin-nut to push the cotter out. Always support the BB, never let impacts travel through the frame and wheels to the floor.always lift the wheels off the floor. When mine were stuck in I supported the bottom bracket on a lump of softwood (not on the end-grain, because there's no give in the end-grain), I got a piece of hardwood (never metal) and laid it on the end of the cotter, and whacked it with a wooden mallet. I was lucky, however, because an elderly cyclist (Clem) lived nearby and he was always glad to fit them for me it took him about five minutes in his shed to file them to a perfect fit, and I think the perfect fit was part of the answer to problems of getting them out. I don't know about alu/cotterless cranksets being the answer to the maiden's prayer, but they were the answer to mine. Right up to the mid-sixties (I was in my early twenties then) I had to use them until I could afford alu/cotterless. I didn't have a vice and I could never file them to just the right angle. Cotterpins were the absolute bane (or pain even, or blight if you like) of my cycling life.
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