Day Of Rest

Tending to some Del Rey tasks today. First is the seatpost. I painted the flutes yesterday evening, took every ounce of willpower not to paint them gold, but deep down I know it wouldn't be right. So I went with basic black. I just glommed the paint on as shown:



No need to be careful, because now today, after it has dried for about 12 hours, I just rub off the slop with a piece of wood dipped in mineral spirits:


I find this works fine if the slop is on smooth polished surfaces and is less messy than trying to do it within minutes of painting, as some others suggest. This took maybe 5 minutes to clean up.


Apply a thin coat of grease to the lower part of the seatpost, install:


I'm hoping the black flutes will provide some black up high and help anchor the green Brooks saddle that I've ordered.

Next is the rear derailleur. The 1984 Fuji Del Rey came with a Suntour ARx. These are fine derailleurs, but a little bland. Plus, I'm trying to emphasize the classic form of this bike. Fortunately, the Fuji Otaku parts department had this in stock:


A Suntour Vx-S, mid length cage. As we know, Fuji was completely in bed with the Suntour folks in Shiga prefecture (my wife's hometown, incidentally), so they were able to get a lot of Suntour stuff with their branding on it. It is sort of grubby, but very few scratches, as this shot of the knuckle, a typical problem area, shows:


A few minutes of disassembly with the tools shown below, and into a mineral spirits soak:


This derailleur cleaned up nicely, revealing no problems.




Now would be the time to polish, the Vx models are not anodized and can be brought up to a high shine. I don't know if I'm going to do this... One minor cosmetic problem did reveal itself, some light corrosion inside the chromed pivot bolts, a very common condition:


Not to worry, an oxalic acid bath will fix this up.


I like to use hot water on the theory that this speeds up the chemical reaction. In this case, I used two heaping spoonfuls of the wood bleach. For good measure, I put in all the other chromed steel bits off the derailleur as well as the quick release levers from the Del Rey's brakes, which were showing a little rust dotting.


I'll let this sit around for a while, either until this evening or tomorrow, rinse, dry, and assemble.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday as much as I am mine.