Last weekend I stripped down an old bike and saw the old sandpaper-under-the stem trick. Some may not know these but find them useful. These are in the category of desperate times...
1) Need to adapt 25.4 bars to slightly bigger stem... I used to use sandpaper or (better) beer can as shim to make the fit and keep from sliding. Last weekend, found a better material: used ashim cut from an overhead transparency sheet, somewhere about 5 mil thick. rigid enough to slide in easily, easy to trim, and very nearly invisible from the edge.
2) The one-bolt seatpost ridges and valleys gone smooth, so the saddle has a wonderful auto-tilt feature? Put a piece of pretty coarse sandpaper between them. the Garnet "sand" will dig into the metal and give a good surface. You don't care if the sandpaper is waterproof; the grains do the work.
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What famous mechanic discovered the limitations of cone spanners as pedal wrenches? His secret is secure!
harvey sachs