I bought a lovely red Schwinn Super LeTour 12.2 last summer for $50, thinking I’d fix it up and flip it. Built by Panasonic in Japan in 1976, this bike was near the top of Schwinn’s lineup with a double-butted chromoly frame.
But as soon as I got it home, I discovered the aluminun seatpost was well and truly stuck. Any ungreased alloy seatpost will chemically bond to a steel frame over time and this one wasn’t budging.
The internet offers multple solutions. Flooding the seat tube with penetrating oil didn’t help. So, I cut post 1” above the frame to cut the post out with a hacksaw, but the walls of the post were too thick for the hacksaw blade to enter. The next methods would be even more extreme, involving dry ice or, failing that, caustic lye. I gave up and set the whole thing aside.
Until today, a cold day in Minnesota’s January. It’s been around 5-15 degrees for a day or two now, so I thought this might be the LeTour’s big chance to get unstuck.
Aluminum expands and contracts more than steel due to changes in temperature. So, when it’s really cold the post will be just a little smaller than it was last summer. I clamped the seatpost in my vice, applied a little heat to the outside of the seat tube, and turned the whole frame. It creaked, it groaned, and it gave way. Sucess! Now I can put this great bike back together and get it rolling again. Thanks, winter!
But as soon as I got it home, I discovered the aluminun seatpost was well and truly stuck. Any ungreased alloy seatpost will chemically bond to a steel frame over time and this one wasn’t budging.
The internet offers multple solutions. Flooding the seat tube with penetrating oil didn’t help. So, I cut post 1” above the frame to cut the post out with a hacksaw, but the walls of the post were too thick for the hacksaw blade to enter. The next methods would be even more extreme, involving dry ice or, failing that, caustic lye. I gave up and set the whole thing aside.
Until today, a cold day in Minnesota’s January. It’s been around 5-15 degrees for a day or two now, so I thought this might be the LeTour’s big chance to get unstuck.
Aluminum expands and contracts more than steel due to changes in temperature. So, when it’s really cold the post will be just a little smaller than it was last summer. I clamped the seatpost in my vice, applied a little heat to the outside of the seat tube, and turned the whole frame. It creaked, it groaned, and it gave way. Sucess! Now I can put this great bike back together and get it rolling again. Thanks, winter!