Help! seat post at the bottom of the tube!

[clerkkent]

I acquired a mongoose mt bike over the weekend, missing the seat and seat post. Went to put a new seat post in it, and something is blocking it... low and behold, there is another seat post in there already. I turned frame upside down to try to shake it out, but only a tad of movement. the post looks like it is a tad smaller than the inner diameter of the tube, so it should want to come out. Are there any handy tricks to extract seat posts hiding in tubes?

 

[dragnusa]

Id say spray inside the tube with pb blaster and let it sit then flip the bike over and drop it down on the seat tube and see if the frees it.

 

[clamdigger]

threaded rod is cheap. places like Home Depot sell it in Hardware Dept. remove the crank. put the threaded rod down through the seat tube and seat post. put a nut on the bottom end of the rod in the botton bracket.put a washer and nut on the top end and tighten the top nut to pull the seat post to the top of the seat tube. if it will not pull out the rest of the way by hand,you can create a slide hammer with a piece of pipe on the top end of the threaded rod,between the seat tube and the top washer & nut.

 

[yoothgeye]

threaded rod is cheap. places like Home Depot sell it in Hardware Dept. remove the crank. put the threaded rod down through the seat tube and seat post. put a nut on the bottom end of the rod in the botton bracket.put a washer and nut on the top end and tighten the top nut to pull the seat post to the top of the seat tube. if it will not pull out the rest of the way by hand,you can create a slide hammer with a piece of pipe on the top end of the threaded rod,between the seat tube and the top washer & nut.

This sounds good, but from my experience the hole from the seat tube into the bottom bracket is usually just a tiny hole, not big enough for the all thread, let alone a nut.

You might be onto something with the all thread though.

Most seat posts taper at the top and usually from the process that crimps the end there is a little lip inside the top of the seat post. If you could find a threaded rod that you could actually thread into the top of the seat post and then carefully pull it out, then that could work. It would have to be a large piece of all thread, so maybe a big lag bolt welded to a rod, the tapered end on the lag bolt would easily grab the top of the seat post, once again, this is only if the post has the little lip on the inside.

It wouldn't be terribly hard to make a special tool for removing a stuck post, just imagine something along the lines of a long skinny stem, just a piece of tube, some all thread in it, angle cut at the bottom, making the wedge would be the hardest part. It's something you'd probably only use once though.

 

[Wildcat]

Baling wire.

Insert a piece of heavy wire down through the stem into the open bottom bracket. Tie something, like a 1/2 nut to the end, then pull up on a screwdriver tied to the other end.

 

[MERK]

I`ve had to do this... I used a length of steel rod with a narrow hook bent in one end. Go down seat tube, through the post,then hook the bottom edge of the post and pull it out. Worked for me...