Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The Monkey Decade: Part 6

Intro: This year marks the tenth year I have been riding 29"ers. It also is my ten year anniversary of owning my Campstove Green Karate Monkey. There will be several posts throughout the coming months about my story with my KM and what is going to be happening to it now. Here is the last update.

The Battle has been enjoined...
Enough talk..... I've been all over the history, the "why" of how I came to get this Campstove Green 2003 Karate Monkey. I've detailed out some great memories that were created while riding upon this rig. Now it's time for action.

As I stated in my last post, the biggest hurdle to overcome here will be the removal of the dying UN-52 cartridge bottom bracket. The first thing I knew was that this was going to require some extreme force to accomplish. To be able to apply that force, I was going to need to be able to stabilize my bottom bracket removal tool, so it would not "walk out" when I wrenched on it.

I'm kind of good at improvising things mechanically. Sometimes it works out great, sometimes it is just "okay", but it is a talent I possess at any rate. I grabbed my tool for the bottom bracket, located a crank bolt, and found a SRAM cassette lock ring, but I needed one more piece to the puzzle. Something that would cover the hole in the cassette lock ring, but be big enough in the center to be able to pass the crank bolt through. Aha! I found a derailleur jockey wheel that was without its bushing. Perfect!

The bolt would go through the jockey wheel, and then through the cassette lock ring, which was positioned so the threaded part sat against the tool, and essentially acted as a standoff to give the wrench room to purchase the tool. Tightened down, the tool has no chance of walking out, or stripping the bottom bracket cup. Hammer time........nuthin. 

So, I removed the seat post and introduced a copious amount of penetrant and let it marinate. I'll let that sit a day or so, then I will revisit this little battle and ......win!

Stay tuned for further updates.

4 comments:

Ari said...

Is it the left cup that is stuck??
ari

Guitar Ted said...

@Ari: Both of them are stuck. They've been that way for oh......I don't know, maybe six years now? I tried taking them out back then once and realized they were stuck, but the BB was still good, so I buttoned it back up and kept riding. Now the BB is clunking, so it is dying. I need to get the thing out to go forward with the re-build.

Isolation Helmet said...

My favorite way to remove one of those BB's is to mount the tool in a vice. place the BB on the tool and turn the frame.

Guitar Ted said...

@Isolation Helmet: It may come to that, but it needs to sit a few days and "marinate" in the penetrant. I'm in no particular hurry, so I can afford to wait it out. By the way, we used to use your method to successfully remove seat posts that were stuck at the old shop I worked at as well.