Some of us would be grateful just to strip fasteners. I've ridden 50.4 5-pin French cranksets for a long time. For reasons related to backward compatibility to bits developed in the 1930s, those cranks/chainrings use 8mm fasteners, noticea smaller than the 10mm chainring bolts common since the rise of Campagnolo. For reasons related to limited materials access after WWII (and possibly French stubbornness), said teeny connectors were typically made of wussy soft steel. This is an unfortunate combination.
I have a stash of TA/Stronglight/Nervar chainring bolts that I attempted to tighten to the point where the connection wouldn't wiggle, when POP! the head of the near-unobtainium hex bolt snapped off, leaving me with the stump of the bolt plugging the near-unobtainium sleeved nut. I've hung onto the nuts, in the wishful fantasy that someday I'll get a teeny-tiny easy-out and extract the stumps, leaving me with nuts in case I ever find replacement bolts. Yeah, right. VO sells substitute cyclotouriste bolts, but only for doubles. I harangued them for years to get them to sell triples (same bolt, same spacers, same nut with a longer sleeve), and they kept doing the VO classic "Well, maybe! We'll see if there's a demand!", which is their polite way of saying "get outta here, and stop bothering us with your fringy obsessions. We're not actually trying to make parts for cyclotouristes; we're trying to make parts that make you *look* like a cyclotouriste. Can't you see that cassettes+compact doubles is all we care about?". I haven't tried to harangue the new owners; maybe they'll be more interested. I've come to adopt the position of the great midcentury photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson: When tightening the teeny French chainring bolts, there is a *decisive moment*: the moment at which you've gotten the connector tight enough to perform its function but not yet tight enough to destroy the connector. Some days I feel that decisive moment, and other days I *don't*. I try to avoid messing with my chainrings on the *don't* days. And always root around in the bolt bins at the bike kitchen, looking for the ones that got tossed in because they're obviously too small to be useful for anything. Peter "if you love your weirdo chainring bolts, let them go. If they break, they were never really yours" Adler Berkeley, CA/USA PS for Patrick: It is equally well known that small children are resistant to use the "sh" sound, as it is a weapon frequently used for small-child oppression. "No, *you* be quiet, Daddy!" On Sunday, April 23, 2017 at 3:41:31 PM UTC-7, Patrick Moore wrote: > > O! Very well known! > > Patrick "torque it some more" Moore > > Aside: recall one day my then 3 year old daughter frustrated by some > elementary task, saying earnestly to herself, oh SIT!". > > On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Steve Palincsar <pali...@his.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> Another important step is going beyond that point into the "Oh Shit" zone >> when instead of getting tighter it just spins free because you stripped it. >> >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
