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Post by michael on Feb 15, 2022 20:17:17 GMT
Hello all,
I got my first autocycle last week, a 1951 New Hudson. Before buying it I noticed that the pedals were not sitting 180 degrees opposite each other. The guy who had owned it for 3 years had never ridden it and wasn't very mechanically minded. It started very easily and the deal was done. I thought that maybe one of the cotter pins was worn and that was the reason for the pedals being misaligned. Today to took the pedals off to take a look and lo and behold the recesses on the crank are not at 180 degrees to each other. When one is positioned at 12 o clock the other is at 4 o clock. Never seen this before.
I have tried to post photos but the file size is too big.
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Post by davwat on Feb 15, 2022 20:38:09 GMT
Hello all, I got my first autocycle last week, a 1951 New Hudson. Before buying it I noticed that the pedals were not sitting 180 degrees opposite each other. The guy who had owned it for 3 years had never ridden it and wasn't very mechanically minded. It started very easily and the deal was done. I thought that maybe one of the cotter pins was worn and that was the reason for the pedals being misaligned. Today to took the pedals off to take a look and lo and behold the recesses on the crank are not at 180 degrees to each other. When one is positioned at 12 o clock the other is at 4 o clock. Never seen this before. I have tried to post photos but the file size is too big. Welcome to the forum, sorry can't help with the crank recesses never seen that before. Yep it's a "free" forum therefore picture file size is limited, I mainly use a photo sharing site like Flickr to load pictures to first then link to that.
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Post by JamesCentral on Feb 16, 2022 8:58:11 GMT
When one is positioned at 12 o clock the other is at 4 o clock. Never seen this before. I've not seen it before either ... but I wonder, if you put one of the cotter pins in the wrong way round, will that be enough to straighten the cranks up? |
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Post by davwat on Feb 16, 2022 14:09:22 GMT
It does look like the mystery has been solved from a picture on Facebook, it was blown up by eagle eye Chris E who concurred that a repair had been done with new metal and that has slipped.  |
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Post by michael on Feb 18, 2022 20:21:04 GMT
I got the problem sorted. As one of you guys said, the end of the crank is newer metal than the rest of the crank. Both ends of the crank are threaded which I wouldn't have believed as I thought crank arms were turned in one piece. The drive side is right hand thread, the left side, left hand thread which makes sense as if it were right hand thread, it would loosen when you pedaled it. Anyway, to sort the problem out I put a bit of heat onto the shaft at the join and the end of the shaft came out pretty easily. I then filed the top of the main crank so that when the end part was put back on it was getting nearer the 180 degrees it needed to be at. I had to file it a couple of times to get it perfect. When I got it into position I chamfered each mating surface to create a well for weld to flow into. My mate then welded the pieces together using a steel washer to protect the face where the ball bearings run. I ground the weld down until it was perfect with main crank and end tip. Job done and the pedals back into the correct position. I took a couple of photos but forgot to take some of the crank showing the smoothed out welding. One of the guys in the autocycle club where I live is going to post them later as I'm not sure how to do this. I hope this helps someone in the future.
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Post by JamesCentral on Feb 19, 2022 9:12:57 GMT
I thought crank axles were turned in one piece. They are ... well, forged in one piece [1]. I suspect that, because autocycle crank axles have non-standard dimensions, a previous owner has built this one up to fit.
[1] No doubt Chater-Lea turned them from solid, but nearly everyone else forged the basic shape then turned or ground the important bits.
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