Fused Bike Pedal
I've biked to school almost every day throughout my high school life. However, afternoons of biking home in the pouring rain have finally snapped the bike's left pedal. It seems even plastic can't survive forever.
Ordering new bike pedals weren't a big issue, though it turns out there exist two different standards of pedal size: 9/16" and 1/2", and going from one to another requires an adapter. No, the glaring issue is that after so long, the nut and bolt just wouldn't come apart!
No matter what I tried, pushing and pulling with various tools, the nut refused to budge and come out (it also had only two flat sides, one on top and one on the bottom, meaning a hexagonal wrench much less area to work with). It was almost as if someone took a blowtorch and literally melted the two metal pieces together. So, it seems we need to try something unconventional.
Firstly, the new pedals that I bought already had a central axis of rotation, so I didn't have to reuse the one that the bike came with: I just cut it out with a metal cutter. Then, I used a metal grinder to make a hexagonal shape and cut out four planes around the curved surface. It was a very noisy thing, but in the end I got it to the correct shape and size such that a 5/8" socket could fit on.
Even after this, using a 5/8" socket with torque wrench, the thing still didn't budge, and the outside socket began slipping. So, it was time to go for an even smaller socket of 9/16". And this time, I used the impact wrench.
It finally listened.
