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How do I prevent chrome rust in CT?


LeTurbo

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It seems my headsets get rusty first - the most complicated bit to replace. And once it's started, it doesn't stop. Any ideas will be much appreciated, fellow Hubbers, now that another rainy Cape Town winter is coming on (well, at least this week has been lekker).

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Use a scrunched up piece of tin foil to rub the rust off. It makes it look 1000 times better. Not 100% though, if you look very closely you will still be able to see minute pin prick marks where the rust eminates from.

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Most headsets nowadays are aluminium but if yours is steel with chrome as you say, then it is chrome and steel.

Electroplated chrome is extremely porous and easily rusts from underneath. Regular cleaning completely cures that. Whether you just wash it with water or wash and polish doesn't matter. It has to be kept clean. Chrome parts that sit on the shelf in a dry garage rust, yet a car with chrome bumpers that's used in the elements but washed regularly, never rusts.

Cheap chrome plating is worse. A good job will have a base layer of copper, then nickel and then chrome.

The long-term solution is to upgrade to an anosised aluminium headset. You may have to do so in anyway, since your bearings are probably obsolete and extinct.

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It seems my headsets get rusty first - the most complicated bit to replace. And once it's started' date=' it doesn't stop. Any ideas will be much appreciated, fellow Hubbers, now that another rainy Cape Town winter is coming on (well, at least this week has been lekker).

 

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Move to Upington?

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Thanks all! I'll give the tin foil a try, but not the move to Upington (I spent a year there one day). And I'll clean them more often (I forget about my bikes in winter, ass that I am) but here's a thing about good old bikes and lotsa grease: 30 years of riding and the bearings are still smooth without wobble. 

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