All this fall weather may have you thinking about riding your bike in the cold and wet. If you have a carbon fiber or titanium bike frame, you should probably at least consider your components and bearings. Why not concern yourself with the frame? Well, your titanium frame will outlast you and probably the cockroaches that take over the planet after we're gone. Your carbon fiber frame is mostly plastic, and as we all know, that
just doesn't break down in water. A decent set of fenders, or better yet, a
classy pair of fenders, will do a lot to keep your bearings free of muck.
If you have a steel frame, you should consider rust. Any nicks in the paint can be touched up with color matched paint, or if you don't have that, some nail polish from the drug store is an inexpensive and durable option. The inside of a store-bought frame is probably not protected in any way. Water wicks down your seatpost, gets in the weld weep holes and generally finds a way inside. One thing you can do to protect your frame is spray
JP Weigle frame saver inside. When doing this to your off the shelf bike, you'll need to remove your bottom bracket, seatpost and fork to keep those parts from getting gummed up and giving you access to the frame. You can spray the stuff into the frame through weep holes, welding holes and braze on holes (such as bottle bosses). In fact, spray from both ends of every tube. You don't necessarily need to de-cable the bike.
Spray frame saver into weep holes
You can stuff your bottom bracket with a rag to keep the frame saver out of the threads. You should lightly grease those anyway. The stuff will run out of the frame so you should do this over dirt or some newspaper. To protect the paint of your frame, you can tie a rag around any tubes, just below openings to catch drips. I left the rear derailler on my road bike and wrapped it in an old sock to keep it from getting covered in frame saver goo:
Notice the black rag used to keep drips off the frame and cable
Aluminum frames don't rust, per se, but do corrode. I don't live in a very salty environment, but I've got to believe that road salt will eventually mess with an aluminum frame, Perhaps Frame Saver should be used on aluminum frames in maritime / road salty environments. Any comments on that?
Good luck and enjoy your fall biking.
After removing the cones and axles, I tried something new. I once read about Belgian bike mechanics putting grease ports in hubs to force grease into the bearings from the inside out. So, with that in mind, I drilled a hole that I could later tap, or jam a syringe into in the middle of the hub with a flexible shaft die grinder:
I then taped the hole over, blew out the drill debris, cleaned out the cups with a cotton swab and applied a liberal amount of grease to the bearing surfaces. I used lithium axle grease. If it's good enough for car axles, it's good enough for your bike.
All that grease makes a nice sticky place to put those bearings with a tweezer and make them stay. After putting in all the bearings, I tightened everything up. It took me multiple iterations to get the cups and cones not too loose and not too tight. It always does. I guess if you're a full time mechanic, you get a feeling for this. At some point, maybe after 1k miles or so, I'll try injecting grease into the port until it squirts out the sides, wiping off the excess. I'll let you know how it goes. Until then, they spin like a new set of wheels and should carry me to work and play many more times.
