[Music]
hey everyone and welcome to episode number three in the new bike build series that we've got going
here on the channel if you missed episodes one and two hit the playlist in the info card
right here in the corner of the screen and for everybody else who's coming here
for the content of this video let's not waste any more time and get right on into it what we're
going to be doing today is taking this alienation tin man front bmx hub and removing the anodizing
from it and then polishing the hub i will give a disclaimer here i've never done this before so i
don't know exactly how it's going to turn out but what i will say is that i have determination and
as long as we can get the anodizing off of this hub we will get this thing polished so i've got
all the materials necessary you use drain cleaner mixed with water to strip the anodizing this is a
very toxic and bad process for you so make sure that you do this outside or in a well-ventilated
area then we also have some wd-40 here for the polishing process as well as some scotch brite and
some polish here two different types of polish that we're going to be using one other thing i'm
going to need in this process is something to dip the hub shell into the solution and pull it back
out that is not my hands this drain cleaner is harmful for you to touch with your skin
and have direct contact with it says can cause burns on contact harmful if swallowed read back
label carefully but what it does say is that it clears total blockages guaranteed or it's free
doesn't say anything about removing anodizing though so on that i have a hanger to pull the
solution in and out and for anybody who's here just for the de-anodizing process
skip to this time card on the screen right now because right now i'm just going to be
disassembling this hub in order to de-anodize it first things first taking off a jam nut
setting it aside and then we're gonna grab one of our bolts that goes into the hub
and we're going to thread it into the axle if you ever remove an axle from a bmx hub like this one
a female axle or male axle thread the axle nut on or thread a bolt into the axle i'm just going to
thread it all the way down because the next step is taking our shout out to park tool hammer on
the plastic end and we're going to hammer the axle through the hub so i'm probably going to need to
there we go cool thing about this alienation tin man front hub is unlike
most other front hubs in bmx or a lot of other front hubs in bmx this one actually has
four sealed bearings you can see two bearings on this side two on this side so we got the
axle and bearings out of this hub and all we're left with now is the hub shell and that means
that we're ready to mix up the solution for the de-anodizing process and very simply all that you
need for this is some simple drain cleaner and cold water and you need drain cleaner that the
one of the main ingredients is sodium hydroxide that is the important part that you need so not
just any old cleaner will work for this it's possible that it might but in everything that
i've read you want sodium hydroxide as the main ingredient and literally what i'm going to do
here because i don't know the ratios for this and i'm being totally honest and up front here
i'm just gonna pour some of this into my cold water and then dunk the hub shell in there and
hope that it works out so i'm literally just gonna pour a bunch of this into there i have no idea
what enough is so i went ahead and mixed the drain cleaner and water solution together as good
as i possibly could and moved everything outside obviously because the fumes that come off during
this process are very bad for you and toxic so you want to make sure that if you can you do this
outside or in the most well ventilated area that you have i got a couple other things here as well
i've got some more water to rinse off the hub shell after we do this and wipe it off with this
rag here i've also got some more drain cleaner just in case we need it got the hub shell and the
hanger set up so we can dunk it straight into the water and i also have the solution with a close-up
camera here so let's not waste any more time they say that this process can take seconds to minutes
so we're gonna dunk it in here and see what happens keep in mind this is an experiment still
so i see bubbles coming off of the hub shell not sure if anything's happening yet if i put enough
drain cleaner in here so about a minute has gone by now and i don't know if anything's happened
or not so i'm just gonna take it out set it on the towel and just try and wipe something on
yeah nothing nothing has happened yet nothing at all has happened yet so i'm just gonna go ahead
and take this to the extreme and dump a bunch of this drain cleaner in here
it might guarantee blockage being cleared definitely did not guarantee cleaning off
my hub shell anodizing looks like it just cleaned it really good this is part of
the experimentation process so this isn't exactly a how-to video as much as it is an
experiment
and about 20 minutes later it appears we finally have some like visual progress here
you can see that that the black came off of the hub just there
i mean i don't it's still visually all covered i'm gonna wipe it off once but it feels like it's
gonna be a process here and it's gonna be a while hopefully you can see that it's kind of dull now
at the very least we had visual progress so let me just drop it back in here and keep it going
all right folks at this point the hub is pretty much de-anodized but it's not quite
there i'm i'm gonna run some water over it just to see if we can clean it off some
all right then wipe it off it's almost there having a closer look at this you can see here
it is very very close so just to do the last little bit because this was taking so long i
actually went and got more drain cleaner because i think the problem i might have made is i use
cold water instead of hot so what i'm going to do is i'm going to
dump this out get only enough hot water to go over the hub put some of this drain cleaner in
and see what happens here so hub in here hot water only going up over the hub
you can see it's steaming and there's a lot of bubbles right now so you really can't even see it
on the other camera so i feel like at this point the de-anodizing process is about as far
as i can get it with just the drain cleaner water mixture so now i think we're gonna take a scotch
brite pad and see if we can clean this thing up by itself and then after that we're gonna
hit it with wd-40 with the scotch brite pad as well and just to make this a little bit
easier for you guys to see and for me to get to honestly i put the axle back into the hub
and mounted it onto my fork here i got another camera with another angle so you guys can see
the best possible view on this we're going to take the scotch brite pad and we're just gonna kind of
see what it does i guess because i watched a video on polishing aluminum and they took
wd-40 with a scotch brite pad but i don't want to do that until i get everything off of it
it looks like everything we were seeing before with the the sides
where it looked like it wasn't fully off might have just been kind of on the surface [Music]
and that whatever's left is coming off so we hit it with the scotch brite pad also with some really
really fine grit sandpaper and i think we're at a point where we can start hitting it with the
wd-40 and the scotch brite pad i honestly i kind of forgot about this part but uh seems pretty
straightforward you just kind of spray some wd on there and go without it with the scotch brite
and oh my goodness if that is not immediately seeming to do something so we're just gonna
go around the entire hub with the wd-40 and get it into polishing shape before we hit it
with the mother's mag aluminum polish as well as this wicked products lightning shine
metal polish a fast acting easy easy-to-use metal polish highest luster with the least amount of
effort we'll see about that nothing about this process is least amount of effort right now
so you might be wondering why things look a little bit different in the uh the close-up camera and
that is because i put this thing through another round of of the drain cleaner bath
i felt like there was just some more anodizing on there that needed to come off but wasn't off
yet and i did not want to sand it so i feel like we're at a good place now to do a little
bit more scotch brite with the wd-40 and then after that i'm just gonna try and do a little
bit of polishing right now but honestly this has been such a process today that i'm probably gonna
finish the rest of it tomorrow i already filmed a different video for tomorrow's tuesday
tip video so that i wouldn't have to try and bust this thing out completely tonight because
i have a feeling that polishing this thing is going to be somewhat difficult
and i don't want to rush it i want it to turn out good so it's looking like aluminum i still
feel like there's a little bit of anodizing on there but i'm honestly to a point with that
bath the uh the drain cleaner bath i don't want to put it in there for any longer so
anybody who's looking to remove anodizing from aluminum i would recommend doing lots and lots
and lots of research because this stuff ain't easy it ain't fast we've wd fordied it
we've drain cleanered it we've cleaned it up now for the polishing so i'm gonna hit it first
with a fresh fresh microfiber and the mothers mag and aluminum polish we're just gonna grab
some up out of there oh it's fresh that's for sure and i'm gonna make sure with this
that i'm going in the same direction that the hub is this is going to be some work
as much as the novelty of hand polishing this entire hub stands out to me i just realized if
i get a drill connected to this thing somehow and get this thing spinning with a drill it
probably go really really fast so i think i might try and figure something like that out
so we got some polish on the rag here we've got the drill and i guess i'll get it all over the hub
first i am so stoked for this here we go oh didn't think about that part
how the polish would just go everywhere how about this we'll go the other way
and i believe we are coming to an end of this process my hands are dirty i put a lot of work in
to get to this point and i love this part of this process where we take a clean rag
and we take a polished hub and we uh get the polish off of it so let's let's check out what
this looks like so you can see here we got some shine going on but wait till we hit the button
oh it looks like it's spinning on the thing but look at that
that is awesome compared to what it was when we started look at that that is a polished
bmx hub right there if i've ever seen one and here we have it ladies and gentlemen the finished
polished hub i can see it put a lot of effort into this thing today and i think that you guys are
going to be impressed we're going to show it from this camera's point of view but look at this hub
oh my goodness i'm so stoked on this the fact that this whole entire hub was the same color as
the jam nuts earlier today when i started i'm i'm just genuinely proud of this honestly i'm proud
that i put this much work in and made it look this freaking good and i can't wait to get it onto my
new bike whenever i build it i'm gonna lace this thing up i'm sure there will be a video of that
soon or i'll probably do it in a live stream make some live streams a part of this uh new bike build
series but i have accomplished the mission this hub is now polished hopefully you guys enjoyed
this video hopefully you guys enjoy this journey of building a new bike there will be a playlist i
think it's in this corner with everything that you need to see from before and after this so
thank you guys for watching and hopefully you're subscribed so we can see you next time for the
next new bike build video as well as tomorrow for another video thank you for watching and goodbye