About half way. Good to ride? I’ve tightened everything up it had a lot of treads catch and everything’s snug and spinning well. Just got the bike and have been having issues with the bars not turning well. I bought a new headset and forks.
by CMD_Photo
4 Comments
Nope. General rule is halfway **into the top stem bolt** at the very least. But you do you, and don’t say you weren’t warned.
Leave the cap/cover for head set on remove spacer and put the spacer on top of the stem under compression bolt. Will have the same tightening distance for the bolt and it will lower your stem. I can’t actually tell from the picture what’s underneath the stem so it’s hard to say what the fix is. I honestly don’t know if this is the answer or not.
It’s either get a lower stack headset, stranger makes a zero stack one, or remove the dust cover where possible or worst case it’s new forks and a longer steerer. Do not run it as is, it’s not safe.
The top cap is designed to pre-load the headset bearings, holding everything in place without being so tight it causes friction on the bearings. Literally hand tight with a lil baby 6mm allen key, or whatever the top cap is..but it needs very little torque.
Some mtb headsets (especially those with an adjustable head tube angle/flip chip) will have different requirements.
But generally you want no more than 5mm of clearance from the top of the fork’s steer tube, to the top of the stem (or next immediate matting face), regardless of how long your top cap is.. thread engagement is irrelevant if you have excessive space between the top of the stem and top of steer tube…there will be a gap, and you wont be fully utilizing the effective clamping area of the stem.