Actually, Jerry Moos underestimates the Funk of the Lyotard, by focusing exclusively on the variability of tread diameters. The Berthet pedal (the wonderful platform pedal with the rear ramp to make entry easier) also c ame with two different lengths of the threaded portion. These are (roughl y) 10 mm (for steel cranks) and 12 - 13 mm for aluminum cranks (and perha ps for the blind-ended TA and early Campy models). That's pretty obvious, eh, class?
But wait, there's more. Remember the fine print? "Specifications subjec t to change without notice." While attempting a "spindle transplant" to g et English instead of French or something, I wound up with three lefts (o r was it rights) disassembled on the bench. They had two different spind le lengths, measured from the inner cone to the end of spindle. Enough v ariability that they did not interchange.
I think that Lyotards (and Huret derailleurs) are really neat as designs for manufacture, and make no judgement about the sources of variability.. .
harvey sachs mcLean VA
Jerry Moos wrote:
Anyone ever noticed an extreme variation in the actual diameter of Lyotar d pedal axles? I just did a trade with Harvey Sachs in which I traded hi m a pair of English threaded Lyotard mod 23 Berthets for a French threade d pair. What I seem to have discovered is that with Lyotard, "French" an d "English" are relative terms. Harvey's pedals were puzzling at first, as they were marked R & L on the wrench flats, which I thought always mea nt English thread, while D & G is always (I thought) French thread and no marks usually French. Yet Harvey had measured the actual spindle diamet er at slightly under 14 mm, and I verified this with digital calipers, ge tting 13.98 mm versus 13.88 for the unmarked presumably French Lyotard mo d 460Ds which I intended to replace with the Berthets on a recently acqui red early 70's Gitane TdF.
I had three pairs of Berthets marked R & L, one of which was to go to Har vey. Just to be sure one wasn't French despite the markings, like Harvey 's, which I thought to be an extreme rarity, I measured all the spindles with the digital calipers. Amazingly, The spindles varied from 13.96 mm to 14.15 mm. One pair was actually a bit smaller than Harvey's. In most cases the left and right spindle diameters varied measurably, in one cas e by 0.14 mm.
This leads me to believe that the R & L marked spindles are in fact inten ded to be English, which would nominally be 14.29 mm, but the manufacturi ng variance is so great that it isn't unusual to find a pair with actual diameter under 14 mm, the nominal French size.
Anyone else ever observed this variance in Lyotard spindles? I believe t he mod 45A and 45D use the same spindle as most Berthets, so I would expe ct them to show the same sort of variance. What about Campy, Zeus and Ja panese pedals? Somehow I would expect those to be more consistent than L yotard, but I could be wrong.
The moral of the story is that it is probably best to measure the actual diameter of Lyotard spindles before deciding where to use them, regardles s what is marked on the flats.
This may also shed some light on the recent TA pedals, which come with a puzzling note in the box (in French of course) that they are BSC but also work with metric (or is it the other way round?) It would appear that w hile an ideal spindle diameter is perhaps 0.10 to 0.15 mm smaller than no minal (presumably the crank threads are closer to nominal), a 14 mm actua l spindle or something very close to that will work in both, just a bit l ooser than typical in English cranks, while snugger than usual in French, which it fact is my experience with these recent TA's. This probably wo rks best with alloy cranks, where installing these pedals in French crank s in effect taps out the crank slightly, which would be more difficult wi th steel cranks. Another reason TA can "play the cracks" in the specs li ke this is that the French thread pitch of 1.25 mm is 20.3 TPI, damn clos e to the English 20 TPI. For all this to work for TA, they will have to have much closer manufacturing tolerances ! than Lyotard, although that probably isn't too difficult to do.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Houston, TX