Rusty old Muddy Fox

[Tsundere]

Stem and headset came off fairly easily, will clean the headset thoroughly before passing final judgement on its fitness, but first impressions are good, no obvious signs of excessive wear or pitting. Regardless I'll probably replace the caged bearings with loose balls when I reassemble it. Externally much of the surface rust seemed to fall away during the removal process, the worst piece being the top nut which may need to be replaced if it won't clean up.

 

[Tsundere]

Cheers! Don't want to crash your thread.. Was thinking of trying to plug up the frame and leave the stem & seat post to soak in something for a week or 2? Anyone had any experience with Evaporust Evapo-Rust remover? The frame is pretty rough but I don't want to damage the paint any more as I'm planning on leaving it original. The stem bolt is out and the quill has dropped down but no movement at all!?

I just received my first batch of evaporust, so I can't really tell you how effective it is yet, but i gather that it works best by soaking rusty items in it over the period of several hours with the occasional scrub with a brush, not sure if it works as well on painted frames as it seems to on things like nuts and bolts though. The problem with a frame is how to keep it submerged without filling a bathtub? I guess you could soak some rags in it and wrap around any problem areas before wrapping again in clingfilm.
Here's a vid that suggests evaoprust seems to be gentle on paint.

For the stuck stem I would try WD-40 first, it will do absolutely no harm to anything and may just work its way in and help to free it up.

 

[RetroDavy]

Useful pictures. I can't tell what materials are involved though. If that's a steel stem then probably ignore my suggestion about cutting through the stem and then sawing down lengthways. That approach worked because alloy is much easier to saw through than steel. If it is steel I'd look at getting the top nut and lock nut off and use Plus Gas or something like that on it for a while. Then clamp the stem itself and use a length of wood through the top of the forks by the crown (to avoid twisting the blades lower down). Then put pressure on one way and then the other. Small movements back and forth once it starts going and keep adding the fluid.

On the Evaporust, I have seen a very good @Peachy! thread (aren't they all) on using Evapoarust as @Tsundere suggested, with rags/paper towel and clingfilm to get rust off saddle rails. Would be the same on tubing.

 

[Peachy!]

Cheers @RetroDavy
As for working on frames in a simpatico style… have a look at what I got up to on @The History Man ’s latest Overbury’s
https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/incoming-overbury’s-again.425893/page-5

 

[Tsundere]

Thanks for sharing that link, very helpful and answered a load of questions I had about how to approach tidying up a frame. I'm going to pretty much follow that process step by step on this bike, and if I get anything like the same kind of results that's how I'll be doing it in future too.

 

[Tsundere]

After a night bathing in Evapo-rust and a couple of hours of vigorous sanding and polishing the headset cleaned up fairly nicely, there's very little sign of wear and no pitting at all in the races. The top nut came out better than expected but it's well beyond ever being really shiny again.

 

[Tsundere]

The non drive side crank is stubborn as hell, nothing I tried will shift it, it defeated my crank removal tool which is now destroyed, withstood around 100 blows from a 3 pound lump hammer with modified socket wrench handle used as to direct the energy behind the hub, laughed mockingly in the face of a 3 legged puller, resisted various attempts at using leverage to prise it off and is still nowhere near to coming loose.



What else can I try? Is there a way to get the bottom bracket out with the crank still attached? At this point I don't care if I damage the crank or the BB as long as the frame remains unscathed.

 

[RetroDavy]

A couple of ideas:

1. Cut it off with a hacksaw. Brutal and effective. Two cuts will make removal easier.

2. But before that... I've had success pouring a full kettle of boiling water over to expand it enough for the crank puller to work. A heat gun would do the same. I've got a 30 year old Park Tools puller which took some abuse getting that crank off.

Guessing that the BB cup takes one, if you have a pin spanner that will fit between the crank arm and BB cup you should be able to take the cup and crank off together.

 

[Tsundere]

Cheers for the suggestions, in the end I got it off using 7 or 8 extremely violent smacks with a slightly smaller but much longer handled hammer, after 4 or 5 smacks the pedal began to disintegrate, a few more ever more rage filled strikes and the crank eventually went flying across the room. A very satisfying moment after more than 5 hours spent on that absolute bastard.

At last the frame is finally and completely stripped and ready for a thorough clean and inspection.

 

[jimo746]

It's quite satisfying when that stubborn part is finally defeated!
Tbh I'd probably be binning most of those components and replacing with the ones you have in the garage. Some might be salvageable with a lot of time and effort, but it may not be worth it. Things like bars + stem are worth saving/repainting though as they may be unique to the bike, the Shimano parts you can easily/cheaply get if needed.