Podagrower

One of the things I love about cycling is how open everyone is to sharing, teaching, and learning. I recently bought an older bike, and decided to dive head first into fixing it up into the bike I wanted it to be. I am a mechanical person, I've done more than my share of wrenching, but I had not been wrenching on my bikes for lack of time and space (and fear of screwing up on carbon fiber). The bike I bought was not cared for, the chain was beyond worn out, 1 frayed brake cable, all cable housings cracked, bar tape and saddle in bad condition. But it was complete and not a rust bucket. As I started to tear into it, I had visions of everything being seized, but somebody had cared for this bike at some point. Everything came apart, seatpost slide right out, didn't need a hammer to get out the bottom bracket-until I got to the pedals which were seized like Chuck Norris had tightened them with his eyes. I should own a pedal wrench, but don't, and of course my 15mm wouldn't fit. I stripped out the allen screws on both pedals with a breaker bar. I decided the SPD pedals were less valuable than the cranks and remembered how to take SPDs apart to repack bearings. Backing the pedal off the spindle 1/4" gave me the space to get a real wrench on it. I used a wood screw and washer to hold the crank to a board since it was off the bike. Then I broke out the torch and gently heated the aluminum crank to get a temperature difference between it and the steel spindle. Then just a little tappy tap tap with a rubber mallet on the wrench and I had the cranks freed.

JanMM

Well done.

Podagrower

And, I can now add the knowledge to center single pivot brakes. Step 1 watch 20 youtube tutorials, step 2 read 87 forum posts, step 3 ignore all of that and figure out what part of the brake assembly is allowing it to rotate and tighten it until it stops. I'm not sure how I spent 2 weekends looking at the brakes before I figured the brake arms were too loose on the adjusting nut.