When you get home tonight, promise us that you’ll pop out all the seatposts on your bikes and make sure they’ve got a nice, thin layer of grease (or carbon-prep), ready for the winter.
It’s an all-too-common situation to find yourself in – a winter of wet riding, damp bike sheds and garages and a lack of preventative maintenance and you come to fit that shiny-new seatpost or dropper post in the springtime, only to find out that it’s stuck fast.
Sometimes it’s possible to fix yourself – a lot of penetrating oil and maybe some help from a vice and Big Reg from next door and you might be able to shift it. Sometimes you can’t and you end up with a snapped or sawn-off post just poking out of the frame. And if not, then you just have to tell yourself you’re happy with that seatpost after all… Or sell the frame on (which is why you should always be wary of frames that come with ‘free seatpost and BB’). Sometimes you can get a local engineers to shift it for you – but in the same way that any powder coaters can powder coat a bike frame, you probably want to trust it to someone who knows bikes.
John Lee, an engineer by trade, but a cyclist at heart has set up with the very niche, but rather essential, business of shifting stuck seatposts. Costs vary, but for around £50, plus shipping, he’ll get your seatpost out, without damaging the frame (and often the post – especially if you’ve not broken it already!). If you’re local to his Chorley, Lancs, workshop, he even offers a ‘fixed while you go and drink coffee’ same-day service.
We’ve got a couple of frames in mind to send John to see how he gets on.
He can be found at theseatpostman.com
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excellent – just what I need & bonus – I work about 3 miles away
Don’t forget to grease your maxle’s – I would suggest he could also make money from getting those out too!
(say’s man who had rear maxle cut out after a long wet winter)
Buy yourself a tin of bostik never seize and also a can of liquid spanner.
great service. Dropped off my carbon road bike this morning, picked it up this afternoon.
I had tried all the DIY un-sieze methods to no avail & did not fancy cutting it out myself.