Cleaning Rusty Chrome

I have an old Colombia 3 speed cruiser that I left outside for at least a year. I guess I lost interest in riding it after the rear tire got a tear in it. After getting another 26x1-3/8" tire, I decided to fix it up again (this would be the 4th time I've reconditioned this bike, it's had a hard life). Anyway, I used some wet aluminum foil to clean the chrome fenders that had rusted pretty badly:

There's a lot of pitting on these fenders, and they're in bad shape. I won't be able to bring them back 100% but I still tried out my aluminum foil trick:

After a few minutes of scraping and rinsing off the rust, here was the result:

Not perfect, but a lot better than what I started with. The pitting went through the chrome into the steel underneath, which is why those specs are still visible. If the chrome was only surface rusted then the wet foil would leave it looking perfect. Oh well, cheers.

Seized Schwinn Seatpost

I was restoring an old women's frame Schwinn Varsity and I couldn't remove the seat post. I'm not sure how it rusted in there so badly since the rest of the bike looked like it was never really used, but that post might as well have been epoxied in place. I used penetrating oil, my propane torch, and a pipe wrench, and the post wouldn't budge. I was actually bending the top of the post with the pipe wrench.

Finally I tried spraying the inside of the seat tube with Lime-Away to try to dissolve the rust holding everything together. After a few hours I hit it with a hammer to see if it would move:

It did. Very slightly, but enough to break the rust bond. When I started turning it with my pipe wrench it made the most satisfying cracking sound that I've ever heard.

Progress:

Victory!

 

Grease your seatposts. That is all.

Polishing Bearing Cones

You'll probably think I'm crazy for doing this, and that I should just go buy new parts. Sometimes that just isn't an option. My Schwinn Traveler had some very worn bearing cones (maybe the wheel was submerged, and then ridden for a while without grease to protect the bearings):

It was bad enough that I would hear a very noticeable rumbling sound if I spun the wheel off the ground. I was debating re-lacing the wheel to a new hub, but I thought I'd try this instead. I pulled the axle out, and tightened the bearing cone and locknut on one end of it. Then I used a drill to spin the axle while I held sandpaper up to the bearing surface:

I used several different grits, starting with coarse emery cloth, then 400 grit, then 1000. It took a while to clean up the pitting since these cones are made of pretty hard steel. My last step was polishing the cones with my fancy metal polish:

Now they look like Deore XT bearing cones:

The wheel spins quietly now, so I guess this worked. Time will tell if they start pitting again (probably not, I used some decent grease). If the bearing cups inside the hub were badly pitted too then I would just replace the hub, but in this case they were fine. Plus I didn't have to spend any money. Cheers.

Schwinn Traveler Rebuild

A couple years ago I showed how I used drain cleaner to dissolve an aluminum seat post that was hopelessly stuck inside an old Schwinn Traveler frame. After dealing with that nonsense, I built a lightweight set of wheels for that bike, and gave it to a good friend of mine. I always liked how it handled, it was extremely agile and fast. Anyway, I found another identical bike at a garage sale this summer, and this time I'm keeping it for myself. This one needs some repairs (of course):

The bike was missing a cassette, but came with another rear hub with a freewheel mounted to it. I'm guessing the previous owner tried to fix the bike, but gave up on it when they figured out that freewheels don't work on cassette hubs. The freehub body itself would spin freely in both directions, so either the pawls inside it were broken or just stuck. Time to deal with it:

Axle and ball bearings removed:

After removing the dustcap, I flooded the freehub body with motor oil. After a few minutes it started working normally again. Now I can repack the hub bearings and install a new cassette:

 

Time to do something about the dork-tastic handlebar setup. This one has steel brake lever extensions, a head light screwed onto a reflector bracket, an extra reflector bracket on the front brake caliper, and worst of all - foam handlebar grips (yuck). I removed the brake extension levers first:

 

Next I stuck an allen key inside the brake lever to loosen them from the clamp on the handlebar:

Then I slid those old disintegrating grips off with soapy water:

Now it's time to remove the dork light. I unscrewed the handlebar stem, then removed the top nut from the headset:

With the headset disassembled for cleaning, this was a perfect opportunity to remove that extra bracket too:

The bottom bracket is next. The lock ring came off easily, but the adjustable cup on the left side put up a fight. I had to break out the penetrating oil (I'm much more used to using this stuff on rusty cars):

 

Since I don't have the proper pin spanner for this kind of cup, I had to improvise a bit:

That worked. After cleaning and repacking the dried out bearings, I could reassemble the bottom bracket (with a hammer and punch, again. I need to stop misplacing my normal tools):

Crank reinstalled:

I also repacked the headset bearings and reinstalled the fork and front brake:

Now the handlebars and brake levers can go back on:

After reconnecting the brake cables and putting on some proper handlebar tape, here's where I'm at now:

This bike handles as well as the last Traveler I had. I love these late 80s cro-moly Schwinns. They are incredibly light, agile, and they usually have indexed shifters. Unfortunately this one was in pretty bad mechanical condition (wobbly wheels, gummed up freehub, pitted bearing cones on the front axle, and missing a cassette), but it's back to normal now.

Bottom Bracket Drainage

I have a dedicated "winter beater" bike that was making a quiet clicking sound while pedaling. First I thought the bottom bracket was getting loose, so I took the cranks off and checked it out. Turns out it was still tight as ever, but after removing it I saw something I didn't like:

My guess is that water and road salt were getting inside the seat tube and pooling up in the bottom bracket shell. With no way to drain out, the water just sat inside of the steel frame and caused all of that rust. Here's what my three year old bottom bracket looks like now:

Might as well have pulled that out of a lake. I used a wire wheel on a drill to scrape off as much rust as possible, then painted the inside of the shell and the bottom bracket itself. Finally, to make sure this doesn't happen again, I drilled a small hole at the bottom of the shell so that water has a chance to escape rather than cause all this corrosion.

This is worth doing if you ride in bad weather, since it can protect your frame and bottom bracket from rust.

Raleigh Grand Prix Resto

Hey it's been a while. I didn't do lots of bike stuff last year (bought an old sports car instead), but I worked on a few things this summer. I found an old Raleigh being thrown away and I thought it could be restored rather than end up in a garbage dump.

Poor bike. Well at least I got to it before the garbage truck. First thing's first, time to take it completely apart. I'll start with the cranks:

These have cotter pins, so I'll use my c-clamp and socket method:

The clamp is supposed to press the cotter pin into the socket, and allow me to remove the crank. This one was on stupid tight. After I tightened the clamp as much as I could, I hit the end of the clamp with a very heavy hammer. That did the trick (although the threads were deformed a bit on the cotter pin). Time to remove the bottom bracket lockring:
 

I couldn't find my special pin wrench that's made for this, but a hammer and punch also works. With the lockring removed I unscrewed the left side cup (which also needed a lot of persuasion):

Since this bike is from the 70's, the bearing grease had dried out a long time ago. Here's what was left:

I didn't even bother fighting with the right side bearing cup. Fortunately I have skinny fingers, so I can just clean the bearing cup inside the frame. Next I disassembled the wheel bearings with a cone wrench and an open end wrench:

Looks like old white lithium grease (that stuff dries out so fast, I think it only lasts a few years). With the wheel bearings apart, it's headset time:

The handlebar stem decided to put up a fight (what a surprise), so I had to use the hammer yet again.

It finally twisted out with some liquid wrench and patience. Next I took apart the headset:

Then the fork slid out:

I forgot that old British bikes don't use bearing retainers anywhere, so I spent a bit of time searching for all the little ball bearings that spilled all over my basement floor.

Here are the ball bearings after soaking them in mineral spirits (I did have to replace a few that were chipped):

Time to repack the bottom bracket:

I just use automotive wheel bearing grease. It's water resistant and probably way overkill for the loads that a bicycle is subjected to. Also, a pound of this stuff costs less than a few ounces of bike specific grease.

This part was fun:

Spindle reinstalled:

After adjusting the bearings and tightening the lockring, I moved on to the headset:

That took a while (seriously, why couldn't they use ball retainers like everyone else). Fork reinstalled now:

Wheel bearings adjusted, and new tires installed:

It's starting to look like a bike again. Time to put those cottered cranks back on (wet aluminum foil cleaned up the chrome very nicely):

I noticed that the chain wouldn't rotate properly (or at all, for that matter). At first I thought it was seized up, but it turns out the pulley cage on the rear derailleur was bent. This was probably why the bike was thrown away in the first place. Oh well, time to fix more stuff:

After taking the cage apart, I bent the plates back into a straight line:

That's better. After that I trued the wobbly wheels and adjusted the brakes and shifters. This bike needed quite a lot of work, but it was a fun project. I like having to solve problems sometimes (and hitting things with a hammer). Here's the end result: