Frame Saver

I have used linseed oil for a few years (not long enough to know whether it works, I suppose).

Doing the main tubes is easy if you have an accommodating family - just get a litre bottle of linseed oil, pour it down the tubes whilst holding the bike over the bathtub. Scoop up the oil that drips out and keep pouring it back in whilst turning the frame over - repeat until you're sure the oil has covered all of the internals of the frame.

Doing the chainstays and forks is a little more difficult. What I do is get an empty 500ml contact-lens solution bottle (tough flexible plastic with a tiny little nozzle), suck up linseed oil with it, then place it in hot water which makes the oil much runnier. Then poke the little nozzle inside all the holes and squeeze all the oil into the stay/fork until it's full - then once it has mostly dribbled out, suck it up again and do the other stay/fork and so on.

Thin straw-coloured linseed oil is excellent for stopping corrosion on bare-steel frames, too (always popular with BMXers). The thick boiled linseed oil works just as well but it has a yellowy tinge.

You could do this outside but then you're going to waste most of the oil. The bathroom only stinks for a day, anyway.

I decided on balance to block the holes.

I used the small plastic cones that come with marine pop rivits. They are designed to be pushed into the centre of the rivit once it is poped to prevent water getting down the centre of the rivit.

They are made of a very soft compressible plastic. Ideal for the job. I just pressed them in hard and sliced the top off leaving just enough proud that I can remove them with a pin should I even need to.

I used Waxoyl from Halfords on one of my steel frames.
It was leaking out of the chainstays for months afterwards, it cleans off very easily though.

holes

interesting thread this regarding the blocking up of the holes, iv always blocked them up thinking surely its got to be better blocked there only there to let gasses out when the frame gets made, they should of blocked them at the factorys the lazy bast@*ds!