why grease seat post?
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It happens all the time. As an automotive technician, I've had to beat on tires with a sledgehammer many times in order to get aluminum alloy wheels to break free from the steel hub. And just recently I purchased an aluminum bike with an aluminum seat post. The seat post wasn't stuck in the seat tube and came out easily, but it did have a bit of surface corrosion on it. I buffed it off with a wire brush and wiped a thin layer of grease on it before putting it back in.
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That's a good idea. I'll have to remember to do that in the spring at the beginning of the riding season.
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At least once each year, on each of my bikes, I will get caught in a huge rainstorm - the sort that leads me to pull the seatpost and turn the bike upside down to drain water from the frame. That's a good time to regrease the seatpost, since it's been pulled anyway.
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Most bikes that have internal cabling have some sort of hole at the bottom of the bottom bracket.
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I keep a mangled seat post from my steel bike as a reminder of what a pain in the behind it is to remove a stuck seat post...and to grease every year.
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Most bikes have internal cabling? No.
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Oops. Never mind! Too much coffee; I skipped the word "that."
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I have heard it called "galvanic welding" or something .... but a seat post can bond electrically with the seat tube, and you will go through all kinds of backyard mechanical improvisations and uncivil vocabulary exercises before you get the sucker free ... and sometimes you will do irreparable harm in the process.
From what I hear .....
From what I hear .....
Because every single mechanic on the planet will want to kill you for allowing parts to seize.
For aluminum or steel posts in aluminum or steel frames use grease
For titanium use anti-seize/copper paste
For carbon posts or posts in carbon frames use carbon paste
Don't let your seatpost or any other parts get seized on any of your bikes.
For aluminum or steel posts in aluminum or steel frames use grease
For titanium use anti-seize/copper paste
For carbon posts or posts in carbon frames use carbon paste
Don't let your seatpost or any other parts get seized on any of your bikes.
Carbon paste is used with carbon posts to keep them from sliding. They won’t corrode but they are slick and will slide. The carbon paste has grit in it to keep the post from sliding.
For steel in steel and aluminum in aluminum, grease keeps another kind of corrosion down. We live in a world of salt...sweat, salt used for road clearing, and seawater being the main culprits.. The chloride ion in the salt is very reactive with both aluminum and with iron. It plucks the atoms from the metal, forms a chloride, and then exchanges the chloride for oxygen forming rust (iron oxide) in the case of iron and alumina (aluminum oxide) n the case of aluminum. The oxides formed have a greater volume than the neutral metal so the seatpost effectively expands.
The chloride, by the way, is released to go back and pluck out more metal. The whole process starts over again. Chloride also helps speed up the corrosion process when two dissimilar metals are used. Aluminum will oxidize and the steel will reduce.
Bottom line: grease the post. It won’t hurt and it will save a lot of headache down the road.
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#41
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Not by galvanic action, but some corrosion will still happen, as you mention further:
I recently bought an aluminum bike with aluminum seat post, and when I pulled the seat post out it had some surface corrosion in the form of aluminum oxide on it. I suspect this was because the former owner used the bike in triathlons, and going from dripping wet from swimming to a bike caused water to seep down the seat post into the seat tube. Luckily there wasn't much corrosion which I was able to buff off with a wire brush, and I reinserted it after spreading a thin layer of grease on it.
I would assume the same would go for a steel seatpost in a steel frame. Let some water get in,and rust starts to become a problem. Putting some grease on the seat post helps prevent aluminum from becoming corroded to aluminum, and steel from rusting to steel.
For steel in steel and aluminum in aluminum, grease keeps another kind of corrosion down. We live in a world of salt...sweat, salt used for road clearing, and seawater being the main culprits..
I would assume the same would go for a steel seatpost in a steel frame. Let some water get in,and rust starts to become a problem. Putting some grease on the seat post helps prevent aluminum from becoming corroded to aluminum, and steel from rusting to steel.
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I also recommend adding a seat to the top of the seat post.