I was the co-manager of a Raleigh bicycle dealership , circa late 1970's .
Guy came in with his very nice , almost new , Raleigh .
It was sparkling clean . Never gotten wet or dirty .
It was a steel frame , with an aluminum seatpost .
His story :
He took his seatpost out to clean and polish it . It took him a very long time , and a whole lot of work , and much polish , to get some kind of gray-ish coating off of the seatpost ( protective anodized layer? plain old oxidation? can't recall which seatpost it was anymore ) . Then , he re-installed it into his bicycle . Now , just a few weeks later , he couldn't move that seatpost at all , to adjust it .
Did he grease it up real well , before putting it back in ?
Heck no ! He'd just worked hard to get it all shiny ! Why would he put any grease on it ? He even polished the bare steel inside the seat tube , just to be sure the seatpost stayed clean .
Did he make sure to clean off the last traces of that potentially corrosive polish ?
Huh ? Wha ?
Did I mention that this was in South Texas ? Gulf Coast South Texas ? Plenty of salt in the air , even if you were 50 miles from the beach South Texas ? Store your bike out in the garage , in the extreme heat and extreme humidity . Or , store your bike in the cool air conditioned house and every time you take it outside it sweats like a glass of iced tea .
The bike was almost new , and clean , and shiny , never gotten dirty , never in the rain , probably never ridden through a puddle .
We worked on the post . We did everything we could think of . We waited and thought and tried other stuff too .
Liquid Wrench overnight had no affect .
Told the young fellow that we needed to drill a horizontal hole through the seatpost , insert a steel rod , and twist it out . Told him it would mean ruining his seatpost .
Oh , o.k. , not much choice , go ahead .
We twisted off most of the aluminum seatpost .
We were afraid to try it again , lower down , because it was getting too close to the steel frame tubing ( seat tube ) .
It's called electrolysis , has nothing to do with hair removal .
Take some aluminum , some steel , a little moisture ( humidity will do , rain is good , but salty sweat is much better ) - - - voila ! Electricity ! The two dissimilar metals will start swapping electrons and over time , they will molecularly fuse themselves together !
The poor guy took his bicycle to the big city . The big city machine shop cut off the remains of the seatpost and used a boring bar ( suitable for the cylinders of small piston engines ) to bore out the aluminum . They finished the last few thousandths of an inch with a fine hone . Nice Work !
We were always going to ask him if they did anything to try to keep the metal shavings out of his bottom bracket bearings , but he moved away . . .
Speaking of bottom brackets , ever taken out the adjustable cup and had water start pouring out of the frame ?
It was those seatposts with the open tops . You ride through a puddles, the rear tire throws the water up under the seat , the seat focuses the spray at the hole in the top of the seatpost , your frame fills with water . Rain ? We don't need no stinking rain ! Puddles will do nicely .
Happy Trails ,
Raoul Delmare
Marysville Kansas
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> 57cm, 58.5cm c-c toptube. This is a touring frame and has had a torch
> applied to remove a stuck seatpost. Now, am I wrong to assume that must
mean
> this frame was probably used a LOT in the rain or is it possible that it
> could have seized that badly from just not having a good lube on the
seatpost
> when it was initially installed? I've never run into one that was so
stuck
> that would require a torch. Lou Deeter, Orlando FL