Nearly ready to paint

Now that the weather's turned and there's no real hope of doing any painting outside until spring, I've finally gotten all the bits off the frame and am ready to give it a brisk sanding and start painting. The cleaning/sanding/roughing up of the existing paint is still to be done, so that'll take some of the winter, along with cleaning the rest of the parts.

The main thing, though, is that I got that obnoxious drive-side bearing cup off at last! Took it back to the Walk N Roll shop and borrowed the correct type of wrench, the tool that screws onto the axle to hold the wrench in place (I should know the correct name, but my brain insists on calling it a "little tin can tool" and nothing else will stick), a normal axle since a cottered one won't work, a hammer, and the vise again. Then it was merely a matter of beating on it until it surrendered and came apart. I'd already given it a good soaking in WD-40 and then oil, but it was pretty corroded into place.

Once again, I was glad I stuck it out and got it apart so I could get in there properly with both a wire brush and steel wool for a thorough cleaning. Plus there's some hope it'll be easier to remove the next time I want to get into the bottom bracket to clean and regrease it.

Current leading notion for paint colors: dark grey with lighter blue-grey lugs and just possibly glow-in-the-dark paint for the edges of the lugs and my little moon-and-paw-print logo, depending on price; with that reflective clear-coat I've already decided to finish off with to follow. But black-and-silver is still in the running....

De-cottering the cranks

It took two of us and hauling the frame down to the Walk N Roll shop, but I finally got those cotter pins out of my cranks and the bottom bracket mostly taken apart. The drive-side bearing cup is still corroded in place, waiting on another trip downtown to borrow another tool, and possibly a mallet, but I'm inside and starting to clean out the layer of dried crud. There's one glob of a substance resembling ear wax, but the rest of the grease is gone. Next step: new bearings and a lot of scrubbing with a wire brush and steel wool, which will be a lot easier and more effective if I can get that bearing cup off.

Anyway, what we ended up doing about the cotter pins was to press them back out with a vise, using a couple of large nuts taped together to make a hollow for the pins to be pressed out into.