[OT] loose front forks after removing spacer at top of headset

[Andrew Ballantyne]

Any ideas?I took out the spacers rings at the top of the headset where handlebars connect a few weeks ago. It appears this has caused the front forks to be a millimeter or two loose both horizontally and vertically. Any tips on how to get this slackness removed, as it rattles on rough roads,

Thx Andrew

[Viet-Trung Luu]

The thing which holds it all together are the pinch bolts on the stem.

Unintuitively:

- loosen the pinch bolts on the stem

- tighten the preload on the top cap (make sure the top cap isn't running into the steerer tube -- the top of the spacers should be above the steerer tube; typically you move spaces from below to above the stem, or vice versa, unless you want to saw your steerer tube), until it's no longer loose

- tighten the pinch bolts on the stem[*]

[*] I believe at this point, it should no longer matter what you do with the top cap, or the spacers above the stem, though some sources will tell you to leave it tightened.

On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Andrew Ballantyne <abal...@icloud.com> wrote:

Any ideas?I took out the spacers rings at the top of the headset where handlebars connect a few weeks ago. It appears this has caused the front forks to be a millimeter or two loose both horizontally and vertically. Any tips on how to get this slackness removed, as it rattles on rough roads,

Thx Andrew

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[Peter Chang]

2014-05-02 16:16 GMT-07:00 Andrew Ballantyne <abal...@icloud.com>:

I took out the spacers rings at the top of the headset where handlebars connect a few weeks ago. It appears this has caused the front forks to be a millimeter or two loose both horizontally and vertically. Any tips on how to get this slackness removed, as it rattles on rough roads,

loosen the stem/steerer binding bolts, re-tighten (it's not that much torque) the headset pre-load bolt, and re-tighten the stem/steerer binding bolts. it be that the spacers were tacking up a little slack that's hard to see and the stem slipped w/o the spacers.

\p

[Nathan Dushman]

Put the spacers back in? ;)

Unless you're going to cut down the steerer tube (the top of the fork), you need to keep all the spacers. The spacers can be above or below the stem to adjust the handlebar height, but they need to be there, otherwise the fork can slide up and down in the headset.

If you do have all the spacers in place, you can tighten everything up by loosening the stem bolts, then tighten (gently) the nut at the top of the steerer tube, then tighten the stem. There's a good description of this here: http://www.slowtwitch.com/Tech/Headset_How-To_-_Part_2_3159.html

[Andrew Ballantyne]

I should have put the spacers on top, this make sense. I'll need to tighten steering-stem down as much as possible, as I don't the spacer at the moment 

Thx!

Sent from my iPhone

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[Viet-Trung Luu]

Note:

- never tighten the preload (i.e., top cap) without loosening the stem bolts (doing so just pulls the expander plug/star nut up, which is counterproductive at best) [been there, done that]

- if the top cap is running into the steerer tube (due to missing spacers), tightening it won't do anything at all [been there, done that too]

- anything to add the space needed while you tighten the preload (before you re-tighten the stem bolts) will do in a crunch; you can remove it after the stem bolts are re-tightened (e.g., you could borrow a spacer from someone else, preferably one above their stem, so that they don't have to reset their preload after you return it to them)

[Andrew Ballantyne]

I was driving by Campbell and got spacers, all fixed now. Thanks a ton!

Sent from my iPhone