Bike Progress
It's been eighteen bejillion degrees in my loft all weekend, so I wasn't terribly motivated to work on the bike. However, I did spend some low-energy time on it today.
First up: remove the seat. This required removing two bolts and then lifting it off. Much to my surprise, I had no problem whatsoever getting the bolts out, and the seat just popped right off with no force at all. That puppy is surprisingly heavy! None of the other bikes I've owned have had 11-pound seats, but none of them have had heavy steel seat pans either.
Next task: remove the bars. The U-bolts that hold the bars on were quite rusty, so I doused them with WD-40 and then went erranding for a couple of hours. Once again, they came off with very little effort on my part. I'd psyched myself up for having everything rusted in place and spending a ton of time arguing with every part, but so far that's not been the case. I did wind up cutting one of the grips to get it off. It was still in very good shape, but a new pair is about eight bucks so it wasn't worth the effort of trying to salvage it.
Things I'm very happy I've thought of early: every small part that comes off gets put into a plastic bag and labeled with what it's for, e.g. "seat bolts". Also, I'm photographing every step of the way, so that I have a clear reference for what things looked like as they came apart, where cables were routed, etc.
Since it's such a low-energy sort of day, I spent some time curled up on the couch watching a movie and cleaning the seat and bars. There was a small amount of rust on the underside of the seat pan, but not much, and the vinyl is in amazing if somewhat grungy condition. Steel wool got all the rust off the bars, but I did it mostly for practice-- they're BMW bars, and I'll probably try to find something a little closer to the original equipment. Still, it was good to learn about how much rust I can get off with fine steel wool.
I'm less intimidated now that I know my strategy is "take it apart a little bit at a time, clean it as you go, document your work, and label everything non-obvious."
Comments
Tips:
1. Get yourself a can of some stuff called P.B. Blaster. It's like a thousand times more effective than WD-40 for unsticking stuck stuff.
2. For your new grips: First clean the bars so there's no gunk on them. Put the new grips a pot of water and boil it for a few minutes. Pull the grips straight from the boiling water and slip them right on to the bars. They'll go right on, then shrink in to place perfectly.
Ah, but thus far I don't seem to *have* any stuck stuff. I'm crossing my fingers for this to continue.
Does the boiling water thing work better than hairspray?
It works a lot better than hairspray. With the hairspray thing, if it sets before you're in place, you're kind of fucked. With boiling, it takes little while longer for it to shrink. Later, if you ever change grips again and cut the old ones off, there's not yucky hairspray residue to deal with.