PB Blaster
 

Hi all,

So this weekend I found this product at Home Depot to help me remove a 40+ year old fork bolt and the round adjustment ring below it. I know many of you already know and swear by it and I just wanted to share my experience - what great stuff!

Anyone have any other everyday or cycling related uses for this stuff?

Thanks,
Tim

Works great, love it, better'n WD40 for sure.

That said, next time I have a stuck bolt, I will be trying something I've heard works even better. There's some real world test floating around out there, too. Homebrew of 50% acetone, 50% ATF by volume is supposed to be better than anything commercially available, but I've yet to test it myself.

What is ATF?

ATF
Automatic Transmission Fluid

I work with acetone. DONT USE IT NEAR PAINTED SURFACES!!!

You have been warned...

PS: we use acetone to take paint off optics (I work in optics). It works rather well, and rather quickly. Keep it away from paint, plastic (delrin however is not affected by it), rubber, etc.

PB blaster is good stuff, The bolts on my car shocks that were fairly rusty (nothing flaking off yet just rusty) took little effort with a breaker bar after being soaked in PB blaster for a few minutes.

Again, dont use acetone near your bike. Just not a good idea, IMO.

Thanks for the acetone advice, nymtber - good thought. Luckily I'm working on taking an old tandem frame down to metal, so it wouldn't be an issue, but the PB Blaster got the last stuck bolt I had on the frame dis-assembly. The home brew sounds interesting, but knowing me I'd forget and use it on a new bike part as well and end up hosed. I'll stick to the PB for now...

PB Blaster didn't work for me no matter how much I.....uhmmmm........blasted and soaked my super stuck stem with it last summer. Tried WD40, Liquid Wrench, but they all failed to release the stem from the steerer tube. What worked for me eventually was CRC Freeze-Off. Took the seized corroded stem off in less than 5 minutes! did the same for the also seized BB fixed and adjustable cup in about10 minutes time. Not saying PB blaster does not work but maybe cases of seized/corroded parts are different enough from each other that one penetrant sometimes works better than the other.

Chombi

As Chombi said, PB Blaster only works within a range of seized nuts & bolts. However, it will be the ONLY thing that works at the most difficult end of that range. I've tried WD40, Liquid-Wrench and several other stuff on-hand at a shop to free up a seized seatpost for 2-hours. It was so stuck, I couldn't even twist it by holding the back & nose of the saddle. Then I borrowed some PB Blaster from an auto-shop down the street and sprayed it on the seatpost and set the bike aside at the back of the shop and left for lunch. When I came back, the seatpost had unstuck and slide down into the frame! So PB Blaster is the best stuff to free up corroded parts, better than WD40 or Liquid-Wrench. But there are cases where even it can't help. I save myself a lot of time by going straight for the PB Blaster first and have thrown away all the WD40 and Liquid Wrench laying around.

CRC make great products although it can get expensive. PB blaster can be had almost anywhere, while CRC not so much.

I use both PB Blaster and Kano Kroil. The Kroil penetrates smaller gaps and smells like candy. Give it a try.

Kroil works good also.Beeswax works better than all of them combined!

In the last analysis though, the stuck seatpost or stem are as bad as it gets for frozen parts on a bicycle. Ask any mechanic. If after trying all of these methods, and the critter is still not going to budge, it becomes time to get truly inventive (if not diabolical) - such as using an air-compressor to blow the thing out, or chaining the bike to a tree and hooking the thing to an electric-winch mounted on your truck! Many bizarre ways have been tried. Some have succeeded. Some resulted in disaster!

Have a blast!

Add Corrosion-X to your penetrating solvent arsenal. It's what finally got my long-stuck seatpost loose after Tri-Flow and PBB failed. Just sayin'....

Jon Z.

This is a variation on "Ed's Red Gun Cleaning Solvent" which is an equal part mix of Dexron II ATF/Acetone/OMS. I believe the 'red" in the name comes from the red color of the ATF. This stuff is supposed to clean anything except heavy copper or lead fouling and will remove them with some brushing.

So guys, lots of different recommendations for different products. Is it safe to assume that most if not all of them can be found at the local hardware store/automotive parts shop?

Kroil is my favorite, but it can be hard to find. It is a good penetrating oil, degreaser, and it also often cleans up paint jobs on older bikes.

I buy it directly from Kano Labs mail order, but I have heard it can be found at gun shops.