Cork in the seat tube?
11-11-18, 09:46 AM
#26
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Using a cork in the seat tube was a common way of carrying spare spokes on long tours. Push the cork down "far enough" that you can stick a few spokes in it with the elbows up. If you need a spoke, just loop a piece of dental floss around the elbow and pull it out. Wrap a piece of dental floss around one of the seat rails and secure it with scotch tape. It actually is an ingenious solution to a common problem. Some frames, like the Surly, have a spare spoke holder on the DS chainstay, serving a dual purpose there.
11-11-18, 11:32 AM
#27
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Not a big fan of putting a cork in it. Open tubing gives a drainage path for moisture, a cork accumulates it. Soon enough you’ve got rust issues.
11-11-18, 02:29 PM
#28
Disraeli Gears
^^^Yea, and verily. See this for the downside to stuffing crap into seat tube, or any frame tube, for that matter:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131757...7627154051334/
11-11-18, 02:58 PM
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Maybe the cork was used as the floor of a hidden compartment, for spare parts, or for maybe for transporting contraband?
Why even care about removing it? OCD, or a real reason, like routing a Di2 battery wire?
Why even care about removing it? OCD, or a real reason, like routing a Di2 battery wire?
11-11-18, 03:19 PM
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11-11-18, 03:38 PM
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Taking a page from Gino Bartali perhaps. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27333310
11-13-18, 10:18 PM
#33
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I did finally remove it; Push it down as far as i could, than broke it up by going in through the bottom bracket. Now I have a nice mess to clean up; all the cork fragments are pasted around the inside of the BB.
11-13-18, 10:52 PM
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After you get it all cleaned out, I recommend a nice bottle of wine and stick another cork in there, for whoever ends up with the bike down the line to figure out WTF.
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11-13-18, 11:06 PM
#35
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11-14-18, 04:27 AM
#36
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Or, you could put 2 corks down there with some space between them, and put a marble with a smiley face on it, between the corks, to rattle around. That'd show 'em.
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11-14-18, 05:32 AM
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Aluminium cork
I have an aluminium cork down the seat tube of my Reynolds 852 custom TT frame. I used to have a Reynolds 852 custom TT frame with a stuck seat post, but I bought a blowtorch and I don't have one of those anymore.
11-14-18, 06:51 AM
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It's a 68 PX-10. Did it also have the wooden plug in the fork steerer tube? There's a French name for that rust generator, but I can't remember off hand what it is.
Last edited by rootboy; 11-14-18 at 07:11 AM.
11-14-18, 01:32 PM
#39
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11-15-18, 02:42 PM
#41
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Taking a page from Gino Bartali perhaps. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27333310
10-06-20, 01:37 PM
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^^^Yea, and verily. See this for the downside to stuffing crap into seat tube, or any frame tube, for that matter:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131757...7627154051334/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131757...7627154051334/
10-06-20, 05:00 PM
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how about a plastic PY10 Pug plug !
10-06-20, 06:17 PM
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Careful........Jimmy Hoffa's ashes might be under that cork!
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10-07-20, 05:50 AM
#45
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The seat tube is completely rusted thru all the way around, a sad end for an otherwise-nice frame.
I'm thinking this completely stupid cork in the seat tube was actually done by Peugeot, on purpose. As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!" If you ride in the rain much (or at all really), spray off the rear tire is pointed right at the slit in the lug for the seatpost pinchbolt. When you tighten the pinchbolt, the seattube and lug kind of pooch out away from the seatpost right there at the bottom of the slot – it's inevitable, even with a properly-sized post and properly-tightened bolt. The gap lets water in, but it's not big enough to allow much air circulation, so the little puddle on top of the cork dries only very slowly. A fender would prevent probably 99% of this, but a PX-10 is a racing bike. Real racers ride in the rain.
See the drill bit extenders, two of them daisy-chained? That's because when I tried to drill it, the cork just slid down, until it was at the bottom. Once it was wedged in at the bottom, I was able to drill through.
Then I fed the two long spokes, joined with a nipple, up from the bottom with a washer under the cork, and pulled it out the top.
I may repair the frame someday, but the 28.0 mm metric seat tube is hard to find. Being a 65 cm, I can't just chop out the middle part of a seat tube from another frame, that was, say, bent elsewhere from a crash. (I have done that, to get a metric seat tube to repair a smaller frame.) Or maybe I'll splice it, with a short piece of smaller tubing inside, overlapping the break by maybe 15 mm above and below, brass-brazed in and filed down on the outside.
But this frame is only borderline nice enough to be worth a repair and repaint. Or maybe even just shy of that borderline. Still thinking about it, but there are so many old PX-10s out there. The weird thing is, I have another PX-10, same size and similar vintage. I got both frames for free. If I fix up the one that's not rusted through, then I probably don't need a second one.
Mark B in Seattle
10-07-20, 09:03 AM
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And more evidence, another similar vintage PX-10 to the OP's:
The seat tube is completely rusted thru all the way around, a sad end for an otherwise-nice frame.
I'm thinking this completely stupid cork in the seat tube was actually done by Peugeot, on purpose. As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!" If you ride in the rain much (or at all really), spray off the rear tire is pointed right at the slit in the lug for the seatpost pinchbolt. When you tighten the pinchbolt, the seattube and lug kind of pooch out away from the seatpost right there at the bottom of the slot – it's inevitable, even with a properly-sized post and properly-tightened bolt. The gap lets water in, but it's not big enough to allow much air circulation, so the little puddle on top of the cork dries only very slowly. A fender would prevent probably 99% of this, but a PX-10 is a racing bike. Real racers ride in the rain.
See the drill bit extenders, two of them daisy-chained? That's because when I tried to drill it, the cork just slid down, until it was at the bottom. Once it was wedged in at the bottom, I was able to drill through.
Then I fed the two long spokes, joined with a nipple, up from the bottom with a washer under the cork, and pulled it out the top.
I may repair the frame someday, but the 28.0 mm metric seat tube is hard to find. Being a 65 cm, I can't just chop out the middle part of a seat tube from another frame, that was, say, bent elsewhere from a crash. (I have done that, to get a metric seat tube to repair a smaller frame.) Or maybe I'll splice it, with a short piece of smaller tubing inside, overlapping the break by maybe 15 mm above and below, brass-brazed in and filed down on the outside.
But this frame is only borderline nice enough to be worth a repair and repaint. Or maybe even just shy of that borderline. Still thinking about it, but there are so many old PX-10s out there. The weird thing is, I have another PX-10, same size and similar vintage. I got both frames for free. If I fix up the one that's not rusted through, then I probably don't need a second one.
Mark B in Seattle
The seat tube is completely rusted thru all the way around, a sad end for an otherwise-nice frame.
I'm thinking this completely stupid cork in the seat tube was actually done by Peugeot, on purpose. As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!" If you ride in the rain much (or at all really), spray off the rear tire is pointed right at the slit in the lug for the seatpost pinchbolt. When you tighten the pinchbolt, the seattube and lug kind of pooch out away from the seatpost right there at the bottom of the slot – it's inevitable, even with a properly-sized post and properly-tightened bolt. The gap lets water in, but it's not big enough to allow much air circulation, so the little puddle on top of the cork dries only very slowly. A fender would prevent probably 99% of this, but a PX-10 is a racing bike. Real racers ride in the rain.
See the drill bit extenders, two of them daisy-chained? That's because when I tried to drill it, the cork just slid down, until it was at the bottom. Once it was wedged in at the bottom, I was able to drill through.
Then I fed the two long spokes, joined with a nipple, up from the bottom with a washer under the cork, and pulled it out the top.
I may repair the frame someday, but the 28.0 mm metric seat tube is hard to find. Being a 65 cm, I can't just chop out the middle part of a seat tube from another frame, that was, say, bent elsewhere from a crash. (I have done that, to get a metric seat tube to repair a smaller frame.) Or maybe I'll splice it, with a short piece of smaller tubing inside, overlapping the break by maybe 15 mm above and below, brass-brazed in and filed down on the outside.
But this frame is only borderline nice enough to be worth a repair and repaint. Or maybe even just shy of that borderline. Still thinking about it, but there are so many old PX-10s out there. The weird thing is, I have another PX-10, same size and similar vintage. I got both frames for free. If I fix up the one that's not rusted through, then I probably don't need a second one.
Mark B in Seattle
10-07-20, 10:17 AM
#47
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Cork goes into the top of open seat posts, not seat tubes. Most all vintage CCM's had that as standard equipment.
10-07-20, 10:33 AM
#48
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Using a cork in the seat tube was a common way of carrying spare spokes on long tours. Push the cork down "far enough" that you can stick a few spokes in it with the elbows up. If you need a spoke, just loop a piece of dental floss around the elbow and pull it out. Wrap a piece of dental floss around one of the seat rails and secure it with scotch tape. It actually is an ingenious solution to a common problem. Some frames, like the Surly, have a spare spoke holder on the DS chainstay, serving a dual purpose there.
I've taped spokes to the underside of left chainstays for years. With the writable Scotch tape, they are barely visible.
10-07-20, 10:59 AM
#49
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I use a long plastic tube.
.
.
10-07-20, 11:07 AM
#50
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I do think there is one good use-case for the cork, but not in the seat tube - only in those open-topped pillar-style seatposts, particularly when used with a saddle that has a cutout. You could probably even drill tiny holes in it and screw spare spokes into them!
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Last edited by scarlson; 10-07-20 at 11:12 AM.