How to deal with rust

Wire wool will be easier than sandpaper. Extra-fine wire wool will bring them up to a decent shine, too. There's not a lot you can do to stop them rusting again though - regular cleaning with baby-wipes might help as it leaves a slightly oily residue. Waxing them all would work if you could be bothered.

If you wanna protect the inside of your frame tubes, the best stuff is Dinitrol - I used to be into classic cars and all the car geeks rated it as better than Waxoyl or similar products. It's about £10-12 a can, which will do one bike. It should probably be re-applied every year.

An alternative is to spray oil in there (like used engine oil) but it's pretty nasty stuff, and I don't think it works as well.

I've just had success at removing rust with a dremel multi-tool style thing, see dodgy photo.

It has an attachment with a circular steel brush. I was aprehensive about using it so tested it on an area out of sight on the frame. It worked a treat though, removing the rust with little effort and taking hardly any of the paint (apart from the paint where rust had got underneath).

After getting rid of the rust I used a soft cloth attachment to buff the exposed metal to get rid of any dust or bits of wire from the brush.

Hamerite has gone on well, so hopefully that's a successful fix until I get the frame resprayed!

1 Attachment

Doing a similar re-furb job some year's ago I used the light emery paper + hammerite on the outside of the tubes and a spray of oil on the insides. Seemed to last ok... though the forks eventually corroded through where they entered the crown lug - a place that never looked rusty at any stage!