Stuck stem - any ideas?

Hi Lewis , sorry to hear that- its a real pain in the butt when a seat post gets stuck.(not literally, but you know...)

I don't know whether it's worth listing my attempts as they were unsuccessful - but I suppose that if I had a stuck post again, I would give them a go and hope that I had better luck and with more experience I would get a better result.

I used a small butane burner to heat the post and then plunged it in freezing cold water. I did this repeatedly. It didn't work and I damaged the paint. But...it works for some folk.

Then I used Plusgas and sprayed from bottom bracket and turned frame upside down etc.Then using grips to twist...it didn't move. Plusgas is far superior to wd40 etc. Available from Amazon.
It didn't work, but the Plusgas comes in useful for lots of other things

Then I was so despondent and downhearted that I went and drilled a hole through the post and inserted an old screwdriver through it and tried to twist it out...it didn't work, and it actually started to deform the hole the screwdriver was in (I think the previous heat treatment had made this more likely)

I then placed the seat post in a vice and tried twisting the bike around it. This might have worked if I tried it early on, but by this time the seat post was a nasty gloopy mess of metal 'treacle' and it seemed I was eventually going to end up with nothing at all to grab on to, so I stopped at this point.

My next , and only , option was to use some kind of acid to essentially 'melt' the post out. I stopped short at this.

So, for what it's worth, that was my seat post failure.

Good luck.

Lewis,

It would need two people at least (one to hold the frame), but if the bike is inverted with the stem in a vice, could a bar be used between the forks to twist them?

Everything would need to be padded of course to avoid damage to paintwork etc, and care needed to avoid twisting the forks.

Sprockit

I am somewhat of a veteran of both stuck seatposts and a stem on Viscounts. I may get around to posting pictures of the latest effort - the grisly remains of a Birmalux straight (i.e. not 'micro-adjust) seat post from my current project - a fillet brazed sport for commuting. I tried everything on the Internet, starting with daily applications of PlusGas over several weeks, apart from chemical alloy-disolvers (caustic soda &c. - alkali dissolves alloy but not steel, acid would damage the steel) - because I had already assembled the bottom bracket and didn't want to take that apart or ruin it. Trouble with those seat pins is that there's nothing to get hold of - except tightening and tightening the saddle clamp - and eventually damaging the top of the tube. I thought a pipe wrench was working but it was only screwing off the top of the tube, leaving a stump. I then attacked in the approved manner with hack saw blades but I think lacked the patience for that. Also used a metal 'hole saw' (looks like a twist drill with the body of a file). This seemed to make some progress but I eventually resorted to using an old spoon-shaped drill bit (from an old-fashioned brace & bit) like a cold chisel and chipping out the remains (hooray!) Slight damage to the seat tube in the shape of a bit of a tear to the slot at the back.

Conversely, I failed completely with a stuck stem and resorted to sawing through it to liberate the frame (although the headset is also immovable ...). Trouble I found with a stem is getting a good purchase on the forks without the likelihood of breaking them. If you have access to a good workshop with a large engineer's vice, or even a carpenter's vice might work, you could perhaps carve out a couple of wooden cheeks to the shape of the forks at the crown and grip them like that. Then wrench the bars to and fro ...

I had a success with a Pro frame with a stuck seat pin. Did all the Plus Gas stuff and then held the top of the pin (standard Lambert/Viscount microadjust in this case) in an engineer's vice and twisted the frame backwards and forwards until it came free. Helped that the frame was stripped. A bit hair-raising - expecting the frame to come apart at any moment. But it didn't. Top of seat pin ruined however.

Maybe the reason I misread Lewis's dilemma is that I have been working on this, and have seat posts on the brain. I rescued this bike from a skip, and now I can see why the owner gave up on it.

I have literally just returned from a friends who has a vice.
I put the post in the vice and tried rotating the bike. Unfortunately, I have managed to pull the workbench away from it's fixing to the wall.

I'm now giving up on this.

Yes, steel frame, but I am almost defeated. Pulling the workbench away from wall was the final straw. 

I might try the butane burner and ice water, but last time I did that it damaged the paint work.

It has a lot of decent components on that I might be able to use on other things, and that seems more rewarding than another wasted morning to no avail.

But thanks for the encouragement Pete.

Assuming your bars are stripped of at least the brake cables, clamp them back in the normal position in the stem, select some appropriate padding, invert the frame with the bars on the padding, stand on the bars to hold them, then use a bar down at the fork crown to twist the forks. Again be careful to pad metal to metal surfaces.

Instead of standing directly on the bars you could stand with the stem between your feet and twist the bars between your heels. Decent pair of boots advised.

That sounds like an excellent idea. Plusgas is in the mail so I'll apply that a good number of times then try the above.

In the meantime I'll get polishing up the other components!

Success!!!

A combination of plenty of Plusgas, metal bar, mallet, and sheer brute force finally got the stem/forks free!

It seems to have been purely a case of muck/old grease as all parts look 'clean' in and of themselves.

I have however since found that my Pro seems to be suffering from the same affliction which will be a little more worrying what with the Death Forks and all but I'll get it out.

Thanks for the advice chaps!!

I guess someone will be along soon with a proper , educated, and correct answer.

But until that point I will give you the benefit of my scanty experience in these matters.

I left a gap of 1 ball bearing and nothing bad has happened as yet- but I don't know if this is the 'right' answer

I'd agree with the statement: if it feels like you have to squeeze the last bearing in, leave a gap.

Better be ready before DFR3 unless you're going to ride the"small" one?
Cheers,
Pete.

Lewis: the wheel doesn't fit in the dropouts or is the fork a 700c and you squeezed in a 27" wheel? If it's in the dropouts it's 'safe' to ride, but won't be good long term. Better cold forge the forks (pull them apart). I've done it with mine (cowboy method) and it worked.