i use oven cleaner on stems, bars and cranksets. it works like a charm. but i've never done hubs, and i'm a little worried the chemical will harm the races if it hits them. is there any need for worry?

the reason i ask is related to a chemical issue i had with naval jelly and a bb spindle. the spindle threads were rusty, so i placed the spindle in the jelly and then lost the shininess of the spindle race. i'm not sure if that damaged the spindle.

i know we're talking about two different chemicals (lye v phosphoric acid), but thought i'd ask.

should i put the axle and dust caps in the hub before spraying the hubs? maybe use tape or stuff the hubs with paper?

the question(s) put another way:

- will lye (oven cleaner) harm the hub race?

- what did the phosphoric acid do to the spindle race? merely dull the shine, or is the spindle now not as "good"?

I wouldn't worry about. The discoloration in the race will disappear after a few miles riding.

I wouldn't worry since most likely their steel any ways and the oven cleaner affects the anodization on the aluminum only. As far as I know steel doesn't get anodized and just plated.

I think Drillium Dude posted in his parts polishing/drillium thread that he likes using Jestco better than easy off anymore... you might try that instead.

okay.

what about the other issue, the naval jelly removing the shininess of the spindle race? anybody seen that before?

That's pretty much expected. Naval Jelly contains strong acids. It'll blacken steel. But the effect is fairly superficial.

Old ammonia refrigerators used to use steel tubing. I doubt you'll affect the races much with with short exposure to lye, unless you manage to loosen them from where they are pressed in, or perhaps leave some caustic soda between the races and the hub.

I've done well with progressive sanding for polishing. I haven't taken a black anodized finish off, but it should work without chemicals.

^ clifford, yeah, i tried just sanding the front hub, thinking it wasn't anodized. it's an ofmega hub from a 1980 bike. it looks just like the campy record hubs i've easily polished before by hand. but that familiar, jagged "line" was forming between the areas where i had removed scratches and where i hadn't yet covered, and i could never rid it easily. so i turned to mother's polish to officially tell me it was anodized, and it was.

i often polish levers without deanodizing them. that 'line' still forms, but for some reason on levers, it's more faint, and i can live with it.

hubs have to be mirror perfect. like stems.

that happened to me recently for the first time, and i had used it hundreds of times before.

it was pedal axles. not only did they turn black, but they gave off the worst odor i hadn't smelled since working in the oil patch in hobbes, new mexico. sometimes, out among the producing wells, you can smell h2s. just a few parts in a million will smell like rotten eggs. a few more parts will kill you. that's exactly what those axles smelled like after retrieving them from the naval jelly. i wonder what happened that time that hadn't happened before...

Ok, so I never quite get anything "mirror" perfect.
But I can do pretty close.

I just finished polishing a crank. Bought it at the Co-op with somebody's phone number etched in it. I'm pretty sure it was legit as I think I saw the mate which was bent.

Anyway, so quite a bit of sanding, and it looks good. However, there are few patchy grey spots around the ends and on the back side. I could probably work those out, but decided that it is not going to affect the rideability of the cranks and nobody will see them unless inspecting very closely.

Here is an RM40 hub that I polished up, along with polishing the cones. I didn't quite get it perfect, hard to get out all of those deep groves, but it turned out very nice once built into a wheel.