Afternoon all, I had a frame powder coated and they have got paint in the threads for the mech hanger and a slight bit in the bb, can I remove with no special tools? Can I just use an old mech and screw it in to clear it or will this cause damage? Cheers.

ask a decent bike shop to run a tap through the threads, mech bolts and bb cups are aluminium and won’t clear the powder

depends how much there is to clear.

you might scrape it out with something sharp/pointy
you could possibly force an old bolt/bb through but as above likely to not clear properly result in a v tight fit…

proper way is to re-tap.

Depends how steady your hand is and what the frame is made of.

I did mine with a very sharp stanley knife blade carefully (and thet bit needs to be emphasised) running round the threads. I only had a few small patches to do so it was fine. Would have taken an age otherwise.

You need something that is harder that is going to remove the paint but not damage the thread. On an alu frame this is harder than steel.

Wire brush would work too althought they are a bit more likely to damage the rest of the paint unless you have a suitably small one. Use wire brushes to clean up threads all the time at work and it is ok on steel.

be really careful with an old bolt or bb as if you cross thread due to the paint you will knacker it. Do it by hand only and take your time. It does work though.

I had this problem.
Used Nitromors, cotton wool, sharp point thing, patience.
It took bloody ages.

Is it the same approach as removing big hitters from threads…

IGMC 😉

for BB i ran an old steel BB shell through it first and that worked okay. HT2 BB was still tight but went in and came out again later okay.

You can make a kind of tap out of an old bolt of the correct thread or an old BB cup by sawing it across the threads. This gives it flutes and so somewhere for the paint to go.

Spent ages getting the paint out of the threads with a pointy thing, looked real good so went ahead with the mech bolt…result stripped threads!!! Had to pick my car up from mot place and my mechanic mate managed to fix it though! : ) now on with the build. Happy days.