I just pulled the rear wheel to put on a new tire tonight, and the chain adjusters, one in particular, are seized almost solid. Is it just a bolt thats threaded into the aluminum of the swingarm? I have it sitting downhill soaking in oil over night. I really dont want to snap one off. Anyone have this issue?
Once the exposed end of the bolt starts to rust there isnt much you can do. When you start to back the bolt out the rusty end takes the threads with it.
Part of my new bike set up was to remove and apply anti seize to those bolts. Never had any problems. When you get them out clean em up and anti seize them. BTW on a Britsh forum I follow a study was done at some mechanical university about the effectiveness of a number of rust busting lubes and the one that beat all of the commercially available products by a mile was a homemade blend of ATF and Acetone 50/50 blend. Dale
Im just worried about breaking the bolt or trashing the threads. I could barely turn it with a 1/4" drive ratchet, and the 1/2" was torquing the bolt in a bad way. I guess if it comes out I will just have to rethread the aluminum and put a bigger diameter bolt in.
That's what I was worried about on the Pumpkin, too. I ended up soaking the adjusters in Bel Ray 6in1, then heating them up with a torch, and then hammering them out with a 1/2 inch air impact. The threads looked pretty bad, but I cleaned up both the ones on the swing arm and the ones on the adjuster bolts, applied anti-seize and put everything back together (but I was prepared to put in some inserts if necessary). But I never had any more problems with them. If you can use an air impact, that will solve the problem of side torque bending your bolts.
Before you go to the next size bolt consider having a thread repair insert installed. Something like a Helicoil or Timesert. Another trick you can try is to heat the area surrounding the fastener (a heat gun is adequate) and melt some paraffin wax into the threads. The wax will wick down the threads and when it dries it will lubricate them and ease the removal of the stuck bolt.
I'm not sure if it displaces water like WD40 (Water Displacement formula # 40). But it did beat WD40, Kroil, PB Blaster, etc. in loosening rusted parts. Dale
