Raleigh BB

[sweazzy627]

I am close to finishing my restoration of a 1978 Raliegh a friend of mine dad gave to me; he was the original owner too! I was hoping to use a shimano octalink crank and BB that I had laying around in place of the original ones because the originals are heavy as all gets out and the drive-side pedal threads are stripped on the crank arm. I was able to get the drive side to about 2-3mm in and the non-drive side would not thread in at all. I got curious and found that ISO/English thread spacings are 1.37 in x 24 TPI and the Raieigh is 1 3/8 in x 26 tpi.

My question is, is there a way to use the octalink? Do you think that I should just have the crank arm re-threaded for the pedal? Or where do I find a new BB and crank (for the Raleigh thread size)?

[sweazzy627]

I should add that I am making the bike a flip-flop FG/SS and that is another reason for not wanting to use the original crank. The chain rings are riveted together which will throw off the one gear look I am hoping for.

[cujo]

In short you can not use the octalink. You have a Raliegh specific bb. Here is a sheldon Brown article to help figure out what to do to "upgrade".

www.sheldonbrown.com/raleigh26.html