Binky

My wife found a really nice old black Italian Bianchi Brava today at a garage sale. Celeste cables and handlebar tape. Teal blue decals.
Nothing fancy, mostly Japanese parts but it has a "Made in Italy" sticker on the frame, Columbus "Doppio Spessore" Cromor stickers on the frame & Columbus Cromor stickers on the forks.
It also had an event sticker from 1999, which was likely the last time the bike had been ridden. I thought I'd better check the seat post... just in case.
I happened to have a set of metric allen keys with me and the fellow watched me loosen the seat height adjust and then we both tried to move the seat.
The seat post was frozen solid, so he agreed to drop the price to $50.

Putting the neck of the alloy post into a vice and trying to turn the frame did not free it. Penetrating oil did not free it.
I cut off the top of the post and used a spoke to see how deeply it was inserted into the seat tube, hoping it was a short post. It wasn't.
I hung the bike from the front tire, took a really coarse hacksaw blade and wrapped tape around one end to make a handle, and CAREFULLY cut through the sidewall of the aluminum tube.
Then I hung the bike from its rear tire and repeated the procedure, making another cut 180˚ from the first cut.
It really was not as hard as I expected to keep the blade parallel to the seat tube wall and not touch the steel.

My wife was delighted.

Reynolds 

Well done Sir!
You succeeded in extracting the seatpost & also in making me believe I was going to read how you cut the derailleur hanger, cable guides and shifter bosses off a poor Bianchi...

hueyhoolihan

you make it sound so easy, like this all happened while you were waiting for your three minute egg to cook.

unbelieveable how THICK that thing was. i would have never guessed.

Kimmo

Nice work.

I removed a super-tight seatpost from a steel frame only a couple of weeks ago, but thankfully I didn't have to resort to those measures.

After a couple of hours soaking in penetrant, I put it in the vise and was able to get the bastard moving, but damn was it stiff - and the noise!

My boss came over because he was freaking out (we're in a shared building), but I was like 75% done by then so I pushed on with him contributing some brawn.

The conclusion, of course - 'Phew!'

BTW, I'd throw some 7s STIs on that bike.

Aceldama

Nicely done.

Homebrew01

I have a post stuck in a CAAD 8. Nervous about using the hacksaw method with a thin walled Al frame

rpenmanparker 

What were the manipulations required to get the post out after the two slits were cut. Was it just loose, or was some force still required?

Binky

The secret was using the coarse blade: The aluminum was really chunky & grabby, and very soft. The aluminum powder came out nicely with every stroke.

The frame seat tube was never really at risk because of the angle of attack: Imagine taking a coarse hacksaw and cutting through a 6-inch block of aluminum, compared to cutting through a 6-inch block of hardened steel. The blade chewed the aluminum quickly because it was soft but at the bottom of the cut the coarse blade just slid smoothly back and forth, gave no resistance, and didn't even scratch the steel.
As soon as I took a few strokes and got no metallic dust I stopped.
The whole operation of slicing off the top and then cutting through the seat post twice took about an hour.

As you can see, the post is thick-walled at the top and tapers as it goes towards the bottom. I shined a bright little flashlight down the tube to check the progress of the cuts.

When I thought I had cut enough, I grabbed the stub of the post with slip-joint pliers and tried to squeeze it to collapse the cuts, and then tried to rotate it.

It made an audible click as the oxidation broke.... and the post came out in one piece with one cut 100% through and the other cut about 98% .... just enough to hold the two halves together.

The seat tube is unharmed.

Binky

rpenmanparker 

Thanks. That is what I wanted to know.

jhazel

Well done! Thanks for the tutorial.

bobotech

Very cool! Glad you got it out!

Binky

Me too. The most important thing is that I got a chance to impress my wife, who now intends to either ride the Bianchi or give it to one of our daughters. That makes me the bike hero.

The lesson to be learned is that aluminum seat posts can and do seize into steel frames if put in dry & allowed to sit for several decades. That this is a condition I will look for from now on when I check out older used bikes. We are all of us on the lookout for quality vintage bikes like this old Brava because we appreciate them, but a cracked frame or a frozen seat post or frozen aluminum handlebar stem can radically reduce our enjoyment of our finds... and their value. The fellow selling this bike reduced his selling price to $50 when the condition was revealed. I think that I got a real bargain - a Italian-made Bianchi Brava from the late 1980s with double-butted Columbus steel frame for the price of a case of beer.

It is just a coincidence that I happened to have my metric Allen keys with me and decided to check this bike for a frozen seat post BEFORE I paid for it.

Binky

OldsCOOL

Incredibly nice save!!!