Folks,
Emergency call from a friend that has a bit of metal corrosion between the stem and frame of a bike - It's well and truely immovably stuck :-)
Things tried include Heat, Coke & WD-40. Not tried is an Angle Grinder, Plusgas or Tomato Ketchup.
Any ideas?
Thomas Prufer
I had to use the hacksaw-blade-from-the-inside method once - it does work in the end.
I recently had a sheared off bolt on the ally SD1 engine. Only thing that did shift it was welding on a nut so the remains of the thread got cherry red with the heat. It then came out easily. So heat does work - but you'll need a lot of it. Likely so much you'd damage any paint finish. Otherwise it will be down to drilling it out.
Also
I had that problem so I cycled for months without the steerer bolt and eventually the steering worked loose from the fork.
... but hopefully not you as well? :-)
Thanks all.
Yup, I did figure on some way of attaching my Bosch PMF-180 multi-tool and giving it a good old shake, but my friend had other chemical ideas....
... and succeeded! :-)
His was the repeated application of a very strong and hot caustic soda water solution, poured in the column and left to soak and drained out. A pretty dangerous activity.... kids don't try this at home yada yada...
According to him an awful lot of caustic soda was required to dissolve the aluminum enough to free it, as the stem had managed to chemically-bond to the steel fork steerer tube all the way down.
But thankfully no damage to the frame (apart from some of the paintwork) appears to have occurred during the three days of this treatment. These stem / tube things definitely need a good intercoating of grease ...
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