1992 Saracen Kili Racer

[spatuluk]

I haven't had a chance to try, yet. :|

We've had builders round for the past week, and the shed had to be emptied of all my bike junk while they worked on the back wall. I didn't really want to have a bucket of caustic soda hanging around while they did stuff.

I did have another try at removing the bottom bracket, and only succeeded in completely wrecking the plastic cup. The tool turned the splined part of the cup alright, but the inner part of the cup cracked off. :roll: I'll have to attack that with a drill and break it up to get it out. For the drive side, I think I need to get a BB removal tool that'll allow me to bolt it into place, as my current one won't allow that.

Fun!

 

[johnv]

if you don't care about the seat post too much ...

stick it in a bench vice, then just apply some force to the frame ... quoting my LBS (and translating to english) "if I do it it will cost you 40 euro, find someone with a vice and do it yourself" was his advice!. It kills the seat post but it works (makes a hell of a noise and generates some heat, may want to add some oil during the process)

 

[gmjgreg7]

I haven't had a chance to try, yet. :|

We've had builders round for the past week, and the shed had to be emptied of all my bike junk while they worked on the back wall. I didn't really want to have a bucket of caustic soda hanging around while they did stuff.

I did have another try at removing the bottom bracket, and only succeeded in completely wrecking the plastic cup. The tool turned the splined part of the cup alright, but the inner part of the cup cracked off. :roll: I'll have to attack that with a drill and break it up to get it out. For the drive side, I think I need to get a BB removal tool that'll allow me to bolt it into place, as my current one won't allow that.

Fun!

Any Joy with the bottom bracket yet? I have a similar bike (Race Elite) and am looking to replace the chainset and bottom bracket at the moment, just wondered if you had details of the shell size and width?

Good luck with yours.

-Greg

 

[spatuluk]

Any Joy with the bottom bracket yet? I have a similar bike (Race Elite) and am looking to replace the chainset and bottom bracket at the moment, just wondered if you had details of the shell size and width?

Good luck with yours.

-Greg

soz - I didn't notice the reply! Weirdly, I only found out by searching for the bb size of a kili racer on teh interweb, and it linked here! :roll:

I do know that the spindle is 122mm, as I measured it last night, but I forgot to measure the shell. I found this post, where a 73mm/122mm UN71 is mentioned as being a bit too wide, so maybe a 68mm/122mm will do the trick?

I'm giving up on removing it myself, btw. Not enough time, manpower, or equipment, so I'm going to let a bike shop do it and finally get started on building the bike properly. It's only taken nearly a year!

 

[gmjgreg7]

Any Joy with the bottom bracket yet? I have a similar bike (Race Elite) and am looking to replace the chainset and bottom bracket at the moment, just wondered if you had details of the shell size and width?

Good luck with yours.

-Greg

soz - I didn't notice the reply! Weirdly, I only found out by searching for the bb size of a kili racer on teh interweb, and it linked here! :roll:

I do know that the spindle is 122mm, as I measured it last night, but I forgot to measure the shell. I found this post, where a 73mm/122mm UN71 is mentioned as being a bit too wide, so maybe a 68mm/122mm will do the trick?

I'm giving up on removing it myself, btw. Not enough time, manpower, or equipment, so I'm going to let a bike shop do it and finally get started on building the bike properly. It's only taken nearly a year!

That sounds distinctly familiar to the route I ended up taking

 

[spatuluk]

Re:

I just read your thread (nice), and spotted the answer;

EDIT: oh, for a strikethrough.. it seems that the answer in the thread was wrong. It said 68mm, but I measured it with a digital caliper this morning and it's dead-on 73mm. Maybe it depends on the year of the frame.

I'm quite tempted to get the bike shop to do the seat post too, even tho I'd quite like to see it melt. The trouble is, I just know I'd never get it done. Every time I go out to the shed, my son wants to come and see, then he usually wants to 'help'. It's lovely, but his help is not really the sort of help I'd like when dealing with caustic soda.

 

[gmjgreg7]

Caustic soda and 'help'... That right there is a receipe for loosing some toes!

 

[killicomprestoride]

ive owned two of these and I think these are the best bikes ever ive always thought these bike ride so well and the Saracen e stays are so under priced its unreal if I had more cash id buy every one I see for sale on ebay

 

[spatuluk]

Re:

This weekend, I finally got the bike over to the LBS, for some professional help in getting the bottom bracket off. It's taken me about 3 weeks just to find time to do that, so you can probably imagine why I never got around to removing it myself.

I collected the bike yesterday evening. The burly dude that runs the place was impressed at how much leverage it took to get it off. If HE had trouble, then I would've stood no chance!

ta daaa:


Next up: disintegrating the seatpost with caustic soda!

The plan was/is to plug the holes in the seatpost with blutac, wrap a bin liner around the post as a secondary defence, and then pour the caustic soda in through the bottom bracket.

There was a few problems with this:

• No blutac.
  Bottom bracket hole is a lot smaller than I expected.
  No unwanted containers that're capable of getting liquid into the hole without it going everywhere.

Not wanting to do nothing, I fished a plastic tonic water bottle out of the recycling bin, cut the top off, put rubber gloves on, failed to read the caustic soda instructions properly, weighed 100g of caustic soda into the bottle, then filled it with roughly a litre of cold water.

Suddenly warm water. :?

Suddenly very warm water!! :|

Hot water!!! :shock:

Turns out the instructions said to add the caustic soda slowly to the water, and not the other way around. Fortunately, it wasn't hot enough to melt the bottle. I used a couple of axle stands to hold the frame in place over the bottle, but the ground was a bit uneven, and I was worried the cat would get too curious and lose it's nose or something. I decided I'd put up some defences..



I rescued it three or four hours later, before going to bed. In the morning, I could see what the caustic soda had done:



It did a bit more than merely discolouring the paint - it's stripped it off in places! It's certainly done something to the seatpost, although it's hard to say what, exactly.



I'll have a go at it with a file tonight, and see how much has really been dissolved. With any luck, I'll be able to grab a funnel, some piping, and some blutac on the way home from work, and I can do things a bit more sensibly. :roll:

edit: The next attempt will also involve a 50/50 mixture, rather than whatever I used (stronger than normal, but not 50/50). I'm hoping I can get it dissolved before Saturday, so I can take it to be powder coated.

 

[coomber]

Good work. Is it pouring out the seatpost top then? I would bung that up with the magic blutack.