With the frame appearance hastily sorted, I moved on to the mechanical aspects. I'm sometimes lazy about this -- if everything seems to be working, I just ride the bike. With this one, it was pretty clear that wouldn't be the case. The crank motion felt rough, so I started there. The drive side dust cap came off with no problem, but the NDS, well, that was a problem. The hex hole was rounded -- annoying, but I've done this recently so I knew the next step. I drilled holes for a pin spanner, got lots of leverage but no movement. A few rounds of Liquid Wrench wasn't helping. The holes I drilled started warping and my pin spanner bent, so I tried cutting a slot. Still no luck. Finally, I got out the heat gun. That did the trick. But even after it cracked loose and I got the first movement it was really tight. It took several full rotations before it started moving freely. Seriously, how does a dust cap get this tight? I guess it was the steel dust cap bonding to the aluminum crank.
The cranks came off without a problem, and once they were off I started to question if there were even bearings in the bottom bracket -- very rough. And, of course, both cups were stuck. I tried everything in my bag of tricks before I gave up and called The Wolf (aka
gugie ). His bench wise got the fixed cup out, but he had to go to the angle grinder to cut flats on the adjustable cup and use the bench vise again.
The rest of the tear down was uneventful.