Seat-post stuck!

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Hi, I recently gained a bicycle from my uncle and it's quite a few years old. I'm quite a bit taller than him so I need to raise the seat, unfortunately it's completely stuck. The post itself is aluminium and the frame is titanium. I've seen other forums commenting on tips but never seen any with a titanium frame so wondered if it made a difference when trying certain tips as i don't want to damage it!

Thanks for reading
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Zoiders

New Member
Is it a Raleigh by any chance?
 
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Richyrich100

Regular
Just checking, some Raleigh "Titanium" frames only had about two tubes in them that were actually titanium, the seat tube was steel and they used steel posts so the two could rust together.

Ahhh, that's criminal! Anyway i might try using ammonia to sort out the aluminium oxide, seems to be what others are suggesting.
 

e-rider

Banned member
Location
South West
this topic always comes up - I've yet to hear about someone suceeding without damage to the frame.

Do it the simple way - pay £20 and get your 'local' frame builder to remove it. As there are only a handful of frame builders left in the country this could involve a courier!
 
I have post stuck - it turns but won't come out.

After another trawl through the interweb it's down to cutting it out or freezing.

Alloy, so I am informed, expands more than steel/titanium when heated so heat is useless - but it also contracts more than these metals when cooled so in theory a frozen seat tube should be easy to remove.

Excuse me whilst I go out to try this - I may be some time.......
 
Well - 10 minutes with a bag of frozen peas wrapped around the post and hey-presto came out easy peasy.
 

Amanda P

Legendary Member
this topic always comes up - I've yet to hear about someone suceeding without damage to the frame.
I managed it without damaging the frame.


What works is caustic soda, elbow grease and a little patience. I tried ammonia and it didn't do a thing. The story appears in this thread.

If you can twist the seat post, you've got a tiny space into which you can trickle caustic soda, so try that first.

You really need a serious vice anchored very firmly indeed to something utterly immovable. Remove the saddle, turn the bike upside down and clamp the seat post in the vice (you can get a much better grip on it if it's a "microadjust" type, rather than just a cyclinder of alloy). Then haul on the bike frame to try to twist it relative to the now utterly stationary seatpost.

No good? Or it twists a bit but won't come free?

Then get some caustic soda. You can get it in B&Q for cleaning drains. Read the instructions and follow them to the letter - it's nasty stuff. You need to get it to where it can seep between the frame and seatpost, and let it sit there and fizz for a while. If your seatpost is fluted, you can just use an eyedropper or a syringe to put some down the flutes. If not, turn the bike upside down and squirt some through the bottle cage boss holes (if there are any), or else remove the bottom bracket and squirt some down into the seat tube that way.

Wait a couple of hours and try twisting in the vice again.

Repeat the above two steps as often as necessary to achieve satisfaction. You need to keep reapplying fresh solution because as it corrodes away the gunge that's causing the sticking, it's converted to something else that's no longer corrosive. (No doubt a chemist will be along in a minute to give us the equation for the reaction).

Try to keep the soda off the paint. It did my bike's paint no harm, but it probably won't do it any good either.

You'll maybe want a new seat post afterwards. Hopefully not a new bike, though. When you fit the new seatpost, GREASE IT!
 
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Richyrich100

Regular
Wow! thanks for the advice, I will try both freezing and the caustic soda methods. Unfortunately I won't be able to play around with caustic soda until I return from uni (I don't have a garage here or anything). But I'll report how it goes when I do. :tongue:
 
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