Saturday, February 4, 2012

Good News, Bad News, Good News

Man, this is a never ending process ...

The Good News ...
I got the Arundel stainless steel water bottle cages on the bike and they look pretty sharp if I do say so myself!



Carbon cages were not even an option on this bike!

The Bad News ...
While I was building up the bike, I went on a quest to replace the stem hardware, standard steel bolts, with non-corrosive alternatives.  I looked briefly at titanium but didn't really like the look so I settled on stainless steel.

In my naiveté, I scoured the websites and forums for information and finally ordered some tapered socket cap M6 and M5 bolts from ProBolt USA for My Orange Bike.


Well, in my enthusiasm I overtightened one of the bolts and rounded the inside of the bolt head.  Not the stem or the threads but the bolt head itself!  Not good!  I did use my trusty Sear Craftsman beam torque wrench so It wasn't like I was really hauling away at it.  I was very surprised that I was able to round the inside of these bolts with ~10nm of torque.

The first thing I did was visit my local Ace Hardware and pickup a couple of socket cap stainless steel bolts and replace the tapered bolts

The Ritchey Logic Pro stem that is on the bike has a faceplate where the bolts sit in a bit of a well.  This means that some of the standard methods of removal don't work very well like cutting a slot in the head and using a big ass screwdriver to remove the bolt.

I bought a backout kit and tried drilling a pilot hole to see if I could remove the bolt but the backout broke!  I must have been off-center just a bit.  Next up was J-B Weld and a sacrificial 4mm allen wrench.  Cleaned the wound as best I could, mixed the steel reinforced epoxy, glued the allen wrench in the bolt, wait 24 hours, no cigar!

The only thing left to do is slightly destructive; cut through the bolt in the gap where the faceplate meets the body of the stem.  This leaves me with an unusable stem.

The Good News ...
Guess I'll have to buy a new stem!