The crankpins leverage M0.6 bolts, with nuts buried in housings inside the back of the wheel. Those nuts are really tiny – 1 mm across the flats, and so, I had always thought I would glue them into the back of the crankpins, rather than risk having them work loose and disappear amongst the ballast.
The only question was how? This weekend was the pitched battle to figure that out.
The first sortie went well enough: I tested mold release to keep a 0-80 nut from getting epoxied to a bolt. This worked charmingly, and I pressed on.
The secret seems to be to get the nut started on an over-length screw, then spread a little epoxy around its edge, and use the screw to draw the nut into its housing.
I only managed to glue two together before discovering that the third screw did not fit through the crankpin. Then I had to go watch a soccer game.
When I returned, I found that one of the screws had become stripped, and I couldn’t remove it from its nut. I soon learned that acetone can soften epoxy to retrieve parts.
For those keeping score, it’s now 1 win and 2 losses.
I kept going, now deciding that all three remaining crankpins would get glued at once. I continued to test fit them together, and found that one of the nut housings was too small. I drilled it out (dropping and breaking a drill bit in collateral damage), but in doing so, drilled too far and busted the crankpin. 1-3.
As I was getting smarter, when I made the new crankpin, I test fitted the bolt to ensure it would work before parting the crankpin off. Now I had three more crankpins that I was sure could work.
I put them together, remembering to spray the screws, and spread a dot of epoxy around before pulling the nuts into their housings. Hours later, I declared victory (4-3) as I successfully unscrewed each screw from its epoxy-clogged home.
Pembroke:87 