Removing grips from '74 Raleigh Sport
 

I'm restoring a 1974 Raleigh Sport for my wife, and now that my cottered crank nightmare is over I've moved on to general clean up and de-rusting. I need to get the grips off of the handlebars so I can remove everything else to clean them up and do a selective vinegar soak to get rid of the rust. I CANNOT get the grips off (and have started having cotter flashbacks!) - I have tried CAREFULLY prying up the edges in 2 or 3 spots and shooting WD-40 in the gap and then let is sit for a few minutes and then trying to twist the grip. They will not budge. I am reluctant to dump the whole thing in a vinegar bath (grips included) for fear it will damage the grips, so it looks like I may be in for a lot of manual scrubbing with steel wool and vinegar.

I have thought maybe heating the grips up a bit with a hairdryer, but again don't want to damage them. Any thoughts and/or success stories? Thanks for any help!!

Whoops - found a thread tallking about this already, guess I didn't do a thorough search. How can I close/delete this thread?

Warm water soak for a few minutes. They've got holes in the ends, right? plug one of them and stick a pump in the other, you know the cone shaped attachement for inflating inflatable beach toys and such?

Used the air compressor tonight and they popped right off! Seriously cool!

Been my best method for years! ;) you can do it with a manual pump but the compressor is so easy.

Aaron :)