"I solemnly swear that I will ALWAYS grease any stem, seat post, crank, or indeed any other part I install on a bicycle where aluminium meets steel. I recognise that not to do so is to curse Sammy, in a holistic sense."

Damn, on top of the stuck seatpost that caused me to keep the Bates trackie, I've got two frames with stuck stems. What is wrong with the world, I ask you!

Just good clean livin' Sammy

OPPS! I just blew it with my Paramount. I do promise, Sammyboy, that I'll add the grease in November when the Paramount will go into hibernation in the rafters for the winter.

So worth it. You won't be sorry if you dismantle it in 5 years!

Translation: Sammy figures to have Bob's Paramount within five years.

I'm in with the oath. It took me about 15 hours to remove a stuck stem section from the steerer on my Ralreigh Professional's fork. I've been extra-careful about it ever since.

It only takes getting burned once to learn the lesson. The problem is that the kucklehead that failed to grease an assembly is seldom the poor bastard that's trying to get it apart, so the knucklehead never learns the lesson.

I learned my lesson when I was about 14 years old. I was the knucklehead that failed to grease my seatpost. I only learned the lesson beacuse I was also the poor bastard that tried to get it apart.

You mean what is wrong with finishing the seatpost with a dull silver anodizing beneath the limit line? Huffy did this (or something similar) with their cheap, crappy aluminum seatposts on their Bike Boom junk (although this finish was down the complete length of the post - yech), and it works - never had an aluminum Huffy post give me problems yet.

Further, it burns me to hell every time I grease an aluminum handlebar stem or seatpost, and no matter how thin the coating of grease, the bloomin' thing won't stay in one place when torqued down.

Perfectly rotten system, I tell you, and it is the only thing I despise about VLWs...and I despise this nonsense more then I do Magna mountainbikes.

-Kurt

Forks are easy enough - chop the stem off, take the fork out, and up-end it in such a way to dip the steer tube in a bucket of lye. Three days later, the aluminum will be gone - vanished. Clean steer tube, fit fork back into frame, install new handlebar stem. Finito.

Can't do this with a stuck seatpost though, for lye will ruin the paint on the bike. Only way to do this is if you can fill the inside of the seattube up with lye WITHOUT the lye dribbling onto the paint of the bike. Ain't easy if you have bottle-cage braze-ons (your only hope is to temporarly screw bottle cage mounts in with silicone to seal the gap off), and you still have to worry about the lye leaking onto the outside rim of the seattube lug when the post finally gets eaten up to that point. Then there's the big splash of lye coming out the first gap in the seat tube...

-Kurt

I just did it on my Peugeot, I was blessed with both the stem and seatpost being able to move. Both had gummy old grease on them, too. I actually cursed at myself when I forgot to grease the stem. I loosened
it back up, and greased it down, lol. I've had steel stems and posts stuck pretty bad, so I do them all now.,,,,BD

I guess lye would eat right through vaseline right? Never had to protect anything from lye before, lol.,,,,BD

I've probably stripped out 50 bikes in the past year and have had ONE stuck stem that required heroic mesures to remove.
On the other hand, I ALWAYS grease stems, seatposts, BB cups, and cage bolts when building up or maintaining a bike.
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