Unfortunately, the crown and fork races are brinelled beyond useability. Hmmm....
One option is to leave this on a shelf for display, it is very pretty. The other would be to find some races that fit the bike and would work with this headset. The fork race mount diameter on the Finest is 27.0 mm, JIS standard instead of the more common 26.4 ISO standard making this into an even more daunting scavenger hunt.
Today, the morning post brought a very nice Sugino Mighty crankset. These Campagnolo Nuovo Record inspired cranksets, with 144 BCD, graced many high end Japanese bikes in the 1970's. Later, for reasons unclear to Fuji Otaku, they became popular with the BMX crowd.
Very nice condition, no gouging/scratches, just the typical shoe rub on the arms. The bonus is the 109 mm spindle, something not always easy to find, but necessary for proper chainline with this crank.
A later variant, called the Super Mighty, had cutouts on the crank spider arms where there are simply depressions on the Mighty. Due to this, a Mighty may be converted to a triple with the machining services of Elliot Bay Bicycles, who will machine a 74 mm BCD hole pattern in the spider arm depressions for a suprisingly reasonable amount.
However, if one likes the Mighty, but wants a triple without machining hassles and the difficulty of finding 144 BCD rings, there is always the classic 110 BCD Might Tour, as seen on this Fuji America:
These are somewhat scarce, but turn up from time to time. I'm looking for another, so if anyone has one with which they are willing to part, please let me know.
Also, should anyone have the black plastic snap on spindle caps that graced earlier MKS road pedals, please let me know. The newer, screw in silver ones don't work. My set disappeared one day when the bicycle was locked up in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. I'm pretty sure they were swiped, I have a hard time believing they both mysteriously fell off the same day.
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