From Love To Rust and Back Again...




Bottom bracket shell got the worst of it

 "The city's a flood, and our love turns to rust...
We're beaten and blown by the wind, trampled in dust..."

- U2 Where The Streets Have No Name

Love turning to rust, I like that. I suppose it is also some sort of love that is necessary to try and remove a little rust from being so... well, beaten and blown by the wind, and rain, and the passing of time.

So I've started to remove the rust out of the most weathered and salty areas of my 1983 Specialized Allez. Fairly effective at removing rust thusfar, if a bit noxious has been the Never-Dull 'Magic Wading Polish'. Oh, it is "magic" all right, or, at least the fumes from the chemicals that empregnate the stuff help to (unintentionally, OF COURSE) transport me BACK TO 1983 with some old-school tunnage playing in the background. Probably best used outdoors, or at least in a well-ventilated area. But alas, it is February, and it is below freezing outside, so what is one to do?

Love is patient, love is kind
(Can you see the love glowing
off my fingers?)

It's an interesting process to remove rust off of a steel surface. A surface which, had probably not been exposed to the rest of the world, rust-free, for the better part of a couple of decades. I can't help but think of those images from Ballard's dives on the Titanic in that mini-submarine. Rusted ship's hull, barnacles, schools of fish swimming around (preferably, with Kathy Lee Gifford nowhere near the place). In fact, the last time that any of the frame's surface was exposed this bare, it was probably sitting in Kashiwa, outside of Tokyo, Japan waiting for Yoshi Konno or one of his shop staff to throw a coat of primer and then paint on it. It would then be shipped across the Pacific Ocean, bound for Specialized in Morgan Hill, California.

Chrome dropout/derailleur hanger

I've decided, perhaps for mostly sentimental reasons, to not have the frameset completely sandblasted and repainted but rather, to deal with the problem spots and touch it up, keeping the original paint and decals in place for a bit longer. I'm not a collector, or preservationist. I'd like to think that my reasons for the touch-up option rather than complete repaint are as much practical as sentimental I suppose. I love bikes for their utilitarian value as much as for the aethetics involved. The problem rusty spots are just that, finite spots. Most of the frame's paintjob is still amazingly good, considering it is approaching 30 years of age. Wow. Ok, don't linger on THAT thought too much. Yikes.

Anyway, I'm quickly discovering that removing this rust is a painstaking process, but quite satisfying as one goes along. There's an instant-gratification vibe about it, sort of like throwing clothes in the washing machine and then in the dryer. Only, here, the hard effort is on the front end, whereas with laundry, it is in the folding and putting clothes away. And like the freshly laundered clothes that will get re-worn and become in need of re-laundering, this frameset will get cleaned up and built-up, and ridden at speed once more, to again find epic riding adventures in the miles ahead, hoping to turn love to rust once again.

p.s. Special thanks once again, to Jeff Provisor at Main Street Bicycles in Carpentersville, IL for putting up and helping with my never-ending Velo-Maniac needs!