Have you made or modified a bicycle tool?

I find myself modifying or making my own tools all the time.
Here's a simple modification. I cut these tools down for a 4 month touring trip in South America.

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on April 5, 2009 at 12:39pm

correction
If all that's left inside the BB shell is the cup or the BB cartridge body minus the spindle, ball bearing, or cartridge bearings you can heat it from the inside.
Do it hot and fast to keep the heat to the BB shell to a minimum.
Do not ever cool down a hot bike with water though.
Hammer the stuck part a few time to loosen the bond.

UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating said:

If Alex could not get it out, I would assume that the maximum amount of leverage has been applied to the BB cup/or cups(BB tool fastened by bolting the tool to the spindle and using a cheater bar, torquing it in a vise, or hammering, after a good soak in liquid wrench). If that's the the case you will have to get mid-evil on it and cut it out of there. Not pretty.
Heating it up and cooling with a torch to brake the bond is not recommended as you would be adding heat to a hi-stress area of the bike already prone to failing do to over heating during construction i.e., above the BB shell at the seat tube. The seat tube cluster on the other hand is not a hi-stress area and is ok to use the touch trick here but you have to avoid melting the brass or silver if there is any there(you have to heat below there anyways). Absolute no-no with aluminum.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Diamond on April 5, 2009 at 8:52pm

So Howard, both cups are seized? You could go to a machine shop to have them cut it out...i think you are entering emergency territory.

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on April 5, 2009 at 9:06pm

you can hammer out the spindle, cartridge body and bearings on some BB when one cup is removed.
I feel like the modified tool discussion has made a left turn.
Speaking of seized bottom brackets, I had to remove a seized drive side cup today.
No photos, sorry I forgot my camera. But I remembered the very effective method of welding a cheaterbar directly to the seized cup. There was no fiddling around with tools and the welding heated the cup perfectly, and broke the bond.
The key is to weld the bar so as to clear the chain stays when and if the cup rotates in the BB shell.

h3 said:

UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating said:
correction
If all that's left inside the BB shell is the cup or the BB cartridge body minus the spindle, ball bearing, or cartridge bearings you can heat it from the inside.
Do it hot and fast to keep the heat to the BB shell to a minimum. Do not ever cool down a hot bike with water though. Hammer the stuck part a few time to loosen the bond.

UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating said:
If Alex could not get it out, I would assume that the maximum amount of leverage has been applied to the BB cup/or cups(BB tool fastened by bolting the tool to the spindle and using a cheater bar, torquing it in a vise, or hammering, after a good soak in liquid wrench). If that's the the case you will have to get mid-evil on it and cut it out of there. Not pretty.
Heating it up and cooling with a torch to brake the bond is not recommended as you would be adding heat to a hi-stress area of the bike already prone to failing do to over heating during construction i.e., above the BB shell at the seat tube. The seat tube cluster on the other hand is not a hi-stress area and is ok to use the touch trick here but you have to avoid melting the brass or silver if there is any there(you have to heat below there anyways). Absolute no-no with aluminum.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.
How hard is it to pull teh spindle from the body while the BB is still seized in the shell? Or could it even just be rebuilt in there?

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Permalink Reply by krems81 on April 8, 2009 at 4:45am

I'm thinking of turning rounded blocks for a headset press on my lathe, so they fit right into the cups and help with centering.

I also built a very sturdy homemade stand using a welded base, threaded pipe, a woodworking pipe clamp and some maple. I'll post photos soon.

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on April 11, 2009 at 10:17pm

I modified my old park fold-up bike stand today to attached to my welding table. Came up with the idea brain storming about it with Owin at Blue City Bikes. You can see the protective cap I made for it on the welding table, this keeps hot welding splatter from melting the plastic clamp part.

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Permalink Reply by mike w. on April 12, 2009 at 11:01am

Anone have a solution to getting a Shimano cartridge BB out after a lockring breaks?

i have an older steel MB frameset i'm trying to get it out of. The LH ring shattered when i put in the remover and tried wrenching it. For all the world it looks like it was made of delrin! i'm a cup-and-spindle kind of mech, and have had little experience with uninstalling these gizmos. The fixed side is acting like it's welded in... absolutely no give. i think it's steel. i've tried heating it up with a prop torch, and also soaked it in liquid wrench, but no joy. The fixed side is LH thread, right? i'm considering using a cheater pipe, but a) don't want to moose the frame out of alignment, b) afraid of trashing the fixed ring, and c) my workstand is good, but is made of aluminum and i need the stand much more than i need the frameset.

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on April 12, 2009 at 1:33pm

I can get it out at my shop.

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Permalink Reply by UV Metal Arts - Powder Coating on April 26, 2009 at 11:47am

Here is a seat tube frame clamp I made using a 1 1/4" stem and some scrap.

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Permalink Reply by on2wheels on July 22, 2009 at 5:32pm

UV Wanted a pic of my wooden truing stand. Here it is all its glory. It a bit of a pain to adjust spacing, and the dropouts aren't exactly in phase - but it works