The tip was to take some wadded up aluminum foil and water and rub this on the affected area. It was an odd thought at first, but thinking about it further, this is kind of like using steel wool, right? With the exception that I was using water as a lubricant.
Well, I modified this tip due to some things I have seen recently on an amplifier repair channel on You Tube. The amp repair guy I follow there uses alcohol to clean amplifier chassis a lot, so I figured exchanging the water for alcohol would be okay. And it worked alright, but.....
This fork seems to be pretty corroded. Anyway, I wasn't seeing the results I had hoped for. It did remove the oxidation from the chrome though. That was a good thing. So I thought I'd dig out my Mother's Mag polish and see how that would do. I rubbed that on and it did take away some more of the actual corrosion. But.... Yeah, I'm not really satisfied with this. In my experience, this rust will come back rather quickly unless it is sealed away from the air or I get the fork re-chromed or painted. Well.....you take a look and see what I mean...
Treated fork leg on the left, what it looked like to begin with on the right.
Sure, it's 'better' than it was to begin with, but I cannot seem to get it any better than this with what I have now. Again, I am pretty sure, based upon my experience, that this won't hold up in the long term. Not that I will ride this bike a lot, but who knows? Once it gets back up and running, I might find that I really like it, and I may end up riding it a fair amount.
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| Thanks to one of my readers I have this quill insert. |
Now on to the "Thank You" portion of this post. A regular reader and commenter on this blog, 'baric', asked if I might want to have this quill insert so I could use my current stem for the Colnago. The old fork is a threaded steer tube fork, so it requires a quill stem, which I don't have, and the current carbon fork is a threadless steer tube fork, which uses a completely different stem.
So, I accepted the offer and there you can see the part which will hasten things along nicely toward a completion.
I do have a head set, a Campy Athena threaded head set, so that part should be okay. I just have to swap everything over to the old (different) fork than I have now on there.
But, I don't want to swap that all over until I get this chrome/rust situation settled. In my mind at this point I am thinking that I get this fork shined up as good as possible and then clear-coat it somehow and just live with the results. I do not plan on riding this bike in anything but blue-sky weather, so risking the finish against rain or inclement weather of any sort would be taken away.
So, that's where I am at with the old Colnago at this point. By the way, if you are not familiar with this bike and the story behind it, here is the link back to that post where I talked about all of that. Okay, so if you have any advice, be sure to hit me up in the comments. Thanks to 'baric' again, and I'll have a new update on this bike in the near future,
6 comments:
I noticed that the little Dremel wire brushes are much thinner and more wispy than those for an angle grinder, and might help getting down into the pitted areas, while also avoiding significant chrome or steel fork removal. Or you could try brass wire wheels.
@Derek - I happen to have a Dremel and small brass wire wheels for it. I may try that. Thank you for that good idea! But I have an inquiry in on another solution first. I'm just waiting on an answer on that first.......
Stay tuned.
G-ted, Howdy;
I did aircraft Corrosion Control for 13 years and from the looks of the right leg in the photo it appears that the chrome has been eaten through so you'll have a pitted surface when you finish cleaning it. If you can be happy with that, Okay. If not I think you may be looking for a chroming business to smooth it out and give it that truly smooth shiny finish. Used to be a place in Ky. named Brown's a lot of Motorcyclists would send their 'stuff' to.
hank
@hank - Thank you for your perspective! I'd have to agree with you there on the pitting and chances for recurrence of that rust. I'm actually looking into an option such as you suggest. Different source, same idea.
The wadded aluminum is an old hot rodder's trick. Instead of water most people use coca cola or something weakly acidic. Chrome polish usually has oxalic acid in it. That works great too. The acid loosens the corrosion while the soft aluminum pulls it out without scratching the chrome.
You are correct about the recurrence of the rust. A few years ago with an unused, barely used 1990's Autobike, basically a six speed automatic shifting fixie with a rather heavy ( 9 lbs. ) Rube Goldburg style centrifugelly weighted shift mech rear wheel; with a bit of inspiration from G. Ted and a bunch of new and used parts I built a up pretty nice " gravel " mutt out of it. Naturally I had to replace the wheel set, the entire way it shifted and drive train. So it became a 3x9 with a RaceFace crank, bar end friction shifters, Deore rear and Sram X Gen front derailleurs. I even had to stretch the frame rear 130mm seatstay/ chainstay out to 135 for the new wheel and add a derailleur hanger. Focusing on the X Gen, a bit chunky and not exactly the most nicely finished, has none the less been one of the smoothest, most reliable front shifters I've used especially when set up friction and was only 10 bucks from Jensen's back then. But in a few months after install, it started rust pitting on the cage. Been steel wooling it every few months ever since. Plus a while back I wire brushed, sanded and repainted with Rustoleum the rear trailer hitch on my old rusty crusty Mercury Mountaineer. In spite of this the rust is baaack! As has been stated in the past.... " Rust Never Sleeps "....
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