At 09:19 AM 7/5/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Listmembers,
>
>I've had occassion lately to search out some triple cranks. In my
>digging I found a set of NR 165mm road crankarms that are low milage(no
>cracks in the web, very few marks) that are standard double crankarms. I
>bought some of the pieces Campagnolo made for making their triple cranks
>and decided to make a triple setup out of this particular set of arms. I
>have some Campagnolo 36 T chainrings that are 100mm bolt circle. I
>figured that if I was going to drill the arms I might as well place the
>studs in a position where I have a selection of chainrings. I chose a
>74mm bolt pattern which puts the studs in the thicker part of the spider
>and presents chainrings from 24 to 34 teeth which is very nice compared
>to only having a 36 T ring available. Anyone taken this approach before?
>Is there a "triplizer" middle ring made for the 144 bolt circle that
>eliminates this operation? If not, why not? There must be tons of
>Campagnolo cranks that would like to be made into triples without
>drilling and tapping the arms and having the studs to go with it.
>
>Brian Baylis
Perfect timing Pal
Just been playing similar games out of morbid curiousity more than anything else. Inquiring minds want to know.
Yes there is a triplizer ring out there. I've been working with an old Merz 144/100 that Roy Drinkwater swapped to me at the Cirque. (I'm gonna get even, Roy. Do I need this kind of aggravation?). Rivendell used to have a whole series of tripizer rings made by Willow. Haven't seen them in the catalog lately. There was some other thing on ebay a while back, might have been Stronglight. Can't remember the bolt spacing, but I think it was 144/74.
I too would prefer something like a 74mm bcd for the small ring, but ran into a different problem you might want to consider before you drill. Front derailleur. Ya gotta remember here that I live in really steep hills, and do a lot of shifting to the small ring (24s and 26s. Give my knees to the needy), and have really come to appreciate modern front ders with profiled cage plates, and longer cages and wide cage openings which permit smaller small rings and 6/ 7 cogs in the rear. They work. They work very well. I don't wanna go back!!!
So what follows is my front der rant. Your mileage may vary, depending on how obessive you are about front shifting quality, complete gruppo (no, I wasn't listening to that one either), large chainring size, etc.
So of course, that's where I started. Suntour XC Pro (Ooooooh baby). Lost count of how many different front ders I installed yesterday on the Merz/Campy triple project, working my way slowly back through time to junkier and junkier ders, but the final conclusion was (and I knew it was coming, I just didn't want to admit it), the Campy NR (Record? I don't care enough, and I wasn't listening, obviously) front and other clunky flat & parallel cage plate ders from that vintage will sorta work. Anything better, with any form of profiling on the cage plates, or widening of the cage opening towards the rear of the cage will interfer with the crankarm as it passes on each stroke. There just isn't enough space between the crankarm and the large chainring to accomodate anything other than parallel cage plates on the der. Even my NR der required some body work on the outer cage plate to eliminate all chainrub on the cage, and crankarm/der cage interference when in the large ring/ small cog position. Flintstones, it's the Flintstones.... It will probably work okay, but what a nosebleed. But it loooooooks goooood. Also the cage is too short to accomodate chain clearance when the chain drops onto a much smaller ring. I don't know what the lower limit is and I really don't want to find out. What der do people use with the old TAs? Gives me the heebie-geebies just thinking about it. No thanks, I'll just sit here petting my XC Pro. Just another little reminder to myself why I've been using more modern, real triple cranks and front ders on anything that gets more than one ride per year.
Have fun. Larry Osborn Pounding out the hits today with "BF Hammer and the Vicegrips" right here, live, in the studio. Several very long steep coal/log truck infested hills away from Morgantown WV