In a message dated 12/3/03 4:18:14 AM Pacific Standard Time,
jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net writes:
> They look fine, but I know very little about Williams and cottered cranks
> generally. I'm trying to educate myself.
>
Hi Jerry,
Here is what I know:
They aren't a "top" quality, or perhaps the better term would be "racing"
crank. The genuine racing cranks of the day had the spider as one piece with the
drive arm. It was harder to make and generally a tad lighter. The Williams (I
only ever saw this one model) has a separate spider "swaged" to the arm, with
arms that are considerably lighter than many swaged, inexpensive cranks. The
advantage of the Williams cranks was a bolt circle that allowed fairly small
chainrings that were easy to mount and I think could be wiggled over a pedal
without removing it.
Steel cranks generally had two bolt circles. One was the 5 pin close (like
T.A.) that virtually necessitated the removal of the crank arm and the pedal to
change the gearing, but you could fit a 26 tooth inner ring. The other circle
was what Magistroni (and others) used, that allowed gearing changes with the
arm in place and without removing the pedal. The disadvantage was that you
couldn't really put on a ring smaller than 46 (or so) teeth.
With the Williams, you could fit a moderately small ring without having to
remove the arm, although maybe the pedal does have to come off.
Bob Freitas has told me that Merry Sales used to stock lots of rings for
these!
Cotters are generally in only a couple of diameters, and usually you have to
file them a bit to make sure the arms are in line. In the old days, cotters
were chrome, sometimes with high quality nuts, often domed. Nowadays, most
cotters are cad plated and just not as nice looking as when cotters were considered
part of a high quality racing crank. I know that large supplies of the best
quality cotters went to the dump many years ago. It's kinda sad, but they were
seriously obsolete. Now, nice ones are hard to find, most are Taiwan, $75 bike
quality. If you run across good ones, get what you need (plus spares!) and
then tell the list!
Stevan Thomas
Alameda, CA