Campagnolo Victory Crankset Bottom Bracket compatibility

[AnnaStravard]

Hi just in case it helps I’m restoring my dads racing bike it’s got a 68mm bottom bracket shell and I needed a new bottom bracket for the Cranks which are apparently Campagnolo Victory. I scoured the web to find a new bottom bracket and I found so much conflicting advice on the bottom bracket type and axle/spindle length. Well to be honest all the ‘advice’ I found was duff. In the end I bought a sealed Veloce bottom bracket 115.5mm the tapers were perfect but I needed a 2.5mm spacer on the drive side to ‘offset’ it and avoid the chainring fouling on the rear stay. So this chainset probably needs a 118-119mm symmetrical sealed cartridge Campagnolo ‘ISO’ bottom bracket that does not seem to exist. Well actually Phil Wood does them for about £200 with everything needed to fit it etc. Who buys these...????? I’m not an expert on these matters but I did a lot of hard scratching trying to sort it out so I’m just trying to help, sorry if any technical stuff is wrong. PS I’ve posted in the wanted section as I need some parts for the seat post.

[AndyA]

Sacrilege to some, but if I was in your shoes I'd fit a Shimano 110 or 113 mm un55. The taper isn't right, which means that the cranks will sit 4mm further out than they might have had they been seated on an equivalent ISO taper. Giving you approximately the right chainline. Some think this means that your cranks will fall off, one of the couriers in Edinburgh has been using Veloce cranks with a succession of Shimano bbs on his fixed wheel work bike for about a decade....

[Brucey]

Hi just in case it helps I’m restoring my dads racing bike it’s got a 68mm bottom bracket shell and I needed a new bottom bracket for the Cranks which are apparently Campagnolo Victory. I scoured the web to find a new bottom bracket and I found so much conflicting advice on the bottom bracket type and axle/spindle length. Well to be honest all the ‘advice’ I found was duff....

IIRC a Victory double chainset would normally require an ISO BB with 109mm spindle length.

If the chainline is correct (what chainline are you shooting for exactly?-sometimes a non-standard chainline is required for some reason ) on the RHS with a 2.5mm spacer and a 115.5mm BB this would be equivalent to a symmetric spindle +5mm i.e. 120.5mm.

If what you report is the case the most likely explanation is that the cranks are In fact not Victory cranks; Campag made a plethora of cranksets, many of which are little-known. Some of these used spindles up to 132mm length.

FWIW all Victory bottom brackets and all (or nearly all) offroad cranksets would have orignally been supplied with a three-piece bottom bracket. I have no idea why you think there would be a cartridge bracket to fit these older chainsets.

There will be a 'correct' BB out there for your cranks, it is just a question of identifying what they are. A photo would help, as would any markings on the cranks, especially if there is a single digit number in a small circle or a square on the back of one or both cranks.


This is a Victory Bottom bracket



This is a victory double chainset


triple


the triple version of this chainset would use a ~113-114mm length BB.

If you have crankset that uses the same 116mm BCD chainrings but the cranks are fluted this would be a Gran Sport. These chainsets used longer BB spindles, up to 120mm in triple form. The GS triple uses the 116mm BCD rings in all three positions.

[AnnaStravard]

Hello Bruce

Yes those are the exact cranks...Victory in a double set up.

No way would 109mm fit it unless it was hugely asymmetrical or the tapers are different to what I have, I can personally vouch for that. I never said that it came with a cartridge bottom bracket but I wanted one...they in my humble opinion better. Look I’ve not posted to upset anybody I just though it might help someone in the same predicament. You stick to your 109mm but I can guarantee you it would not work! My chainline came in at approx 143mm with 126OLN.

[AnnaStravard]

Hello Andy

Thanks I did contemplate this and I would not challenge that info at all but I was a bit uncomfortable with that Idea and just unsure. I might give it a whirl though when this bb is worn out. Thanks for posting.

[Brucey]

Yes those are the exact cranks...Victory in a double set up.

there must be some difference (wear?) else a 109mm spindle would work as it does on every other Victory crank...?

Do you have a good photo of your cranks?

My chainline came in at approx 143mm with 126OLN.

sorry I don't understand that. Do you mean a chainline of 43mm?

FWIW if you chop and change between different types of BB spindle, it can easily result in problems; leave alone JIS vs ISO, if you examine the wear/mating patterns in any used crank, it soon becomes clear that the only spindle which will immediately make full contact with the taper socket (at normal bolt torque) is the one that was last in there. Even if they are 'the same type' the flats vary in width and this can easily lead to partial contact and premature wear/loosening.

The usual thing is that (over) tightening the crank bolt the first time 'sizes' a new crank/BB combination; I have every reason to believe that this is how most JIS installations work. Campag cranks when fitted to campag BBs don't work like that; they are machined to fit better from the word 'go' and use both a lower bolt torque and ungreased tapers.

However with used cranks there is always a chance that someone has already used the wrong (or several different wrong) spindle tapers in the socket and that the crank sockets are worn. So it might be that which lies at the root of the problem; worth checking anyway.

[edit; the most common issue if you use the wrong taper is that the crank settles more than normal in service and may well assume a new position that means that the chainrings are no longer running true. Once that has happened the installation may work for years. That some bloke runs fixed gear using the wrong spindle quite happily is absolutely no guarantee that the chainring is running true enough for gears...IME if you are a strong rider running gears then problems are almost certain to occur if you use a JIS spindle in an ISO crank.]

Bottom line; if the socket in the crank is not worn, get a campag spindle of an appropriate length (NB most campag of that vintage are asymmetric BTW and shouldn't be compared directly with symmetric spindles; note also that even shimano UN-series spindles are not perfectly symmetric in every size) and use that. If the socket is worn already, use a spindle that most closely matches the wear pattern in the crank.

cheers

[AnnaStravard]

Hi just took a picture to illustrate what’s happening with the 115.5mm bb with the 2.5mm space offsetting the drive side.

My LBS has the bb in their Campagnolo catalogue 109mm but it would no way work IMOO.

Anyway it it is what it is.

[Brucey]

that looks like it might be a 66mm (or narrower) bottom bracket shell to me (a BB, esp a cartridge unit wouldn't fit properly with a spacer like that unless the BB shell was less than 68mm?). If so, the 2.5mm spacer may only be pushing the chainline out ~1 or 1.25mm or something, not 2.5mm.

Another thing that might be happening is that the frameset was originally meant for a single chainring (or a double with a ~44T inside ring) and was converted to a double with the smaller inner chainring at a later date; such frames often end up with the RH chainstay dimple the wrong size and the wrong position, making many double chainsets fit poorly, necessitating a different chainline from normal.

Still not sure what you meant by 143mm chainline…?

FWIW the chainline given by a symmetric 115mm BB is only ever going to be ~3mm different vs a symmetric 109mm. IIRC the victory wasn't quite symmetric so it could be less different than that. it only takes a few thousandths of wear inside the crank socket (easily caused if someone greases the taper and then swiings like a chimp on the bolt) for the crank to pull on another mm or two.

There are quite a few things that have to be right for the chainline to come out as per specs; I think the chances are that some of those things are slightly different on your bike. Well I'd say that is a bit more likely than, say, campag printed the wrong information in their brochures year after year, and the thousands of people who have fitted Victory chainsets just imagined that 109mm was the correct length.

cheers

[AM7]

Are you sure you definitely have a Victory chainset? I ask because the Campagnolo Triomphe chainset looks very similar to the Victory but requires (IIRC) an asymmetric 114.5 bottom bracket. See the picture below - Victory chainset on the left and Triomphe on the right.

spot the difference :-)

I have a Triomphe chainset on a bike with 120mm OLN using the same 115mm (symmetric) Veloce bottom bracket as you, and it works okay. I also have a Victory chainset using a Veloce 111mm BB and that works okay too. AFAIK there are no ISO cartridge bottom brackets longer than a Campag 115mm, so if you don't want to fit a cup and cone bottom bracket, your only option really is to fit a JIS BB as AndyA suggested above. I'd have no qualms about doing so in your position.

[Brucey]

good spot!

IIRC the obvious differences are that

a) the Victory comes with self-extracting crank bolts
b) the triomphe has narrower spider arms
c) the triomphe spider arms come to a 'waist' before the shoulder (whereas victory ones are at their narrowest at the shoulder).

This is a triomphe bottom bracket



FWIW if you look at the one photo from the OP you can see that the spider arms probably have a waist as per triomphe. A side on photo might have made it obvious before now if it was or wasn't those exact cranks.

cheers

[AM7]

good spot!

IIRC the obvious differences are that

a) the Victory comes with self-extracting crank bolts
b) the triomphe has narrower spider arms
c) the triomphe spider arms come to a 'waist' before the shoulder (whereas victory ones are at their narrowest at the shoulder).

And based on the two chainsets I have, the Victory is much more nicely finished than the Triomphe

[Brucey]

its all coming back to me now; Triomphe really was a direct replacement for G.S. because it used the same BBs (and even hub internal parts I think).

Victory was however a lot different; different hub internals, different bottom brackets. It was (internally) made to standards that were nearer Nuovo Record than G.S. However I think they messed up with the styling; they made Victory look almost identical to Triomphe (although the finish on the parts was not the same) and this was both confusing (e.g. this.....) and (in many people's eyes) devalued it.

A few years later they didn't make the same mistake again; the second tier Chorus groupset was styled much like the toppermost C-Record groupset.

cheers