Brand new bike, has Cane Creek 40. Bought a torque wrench since the headset came loose. Pro Bike Tool off Amazon…. Loosens bars to tighten down. Torqued to 10nm, torqued to 12nm, stepped up to the spec of 18nm… thinking to myself… damn that seems like a lot… SNAP!
Now what? How do I fix this?
Also are these bad wrenches? What the hell happened.
by 2late2daparty
4 Comments
You busted just the top cap. Get some sweet replacement from tomiicycles.
18nm is a metric shit ton of torque for a preload cap, what manual/documentation are you looking at the says you need to torque the preload cap to 18nm?
otherwise, adjust the preload cap only to take up slack on the headset which should require as little torque as possible.
https://canecreek.com/how-to-install-an-integrated-is-headset/
https://canecreek.com/how-to-install-a-press-fit-headset/
It looks like you sheared the bolt. Get a new bolt at any bike shop – they might charge you $1 or $2.
On a side note, thats waaaaaaaay too tight. You may have damaged your headset or possibly even the frame, so check that out.
The purpose of this bolt is to snug down your headset – its not meant to carry any load. You basically want this bolt as loose as you can, with your headset not having any play. I would not recommend using a torque wrench on this bolt.
You can actually ride a bike without this bolt in place (not ideal, but you can). It is the bolts on your stem that hold the stem in place, not this bolt. Given how hard you tightened this bolt, you may have pushed your stem down. If you twist your bars side to side and it feels tight or like there’s friction, you’ll need to loosen your stem, replace this bolt, and tighten the system again.
The process to tighten the system is loosen the stem bolts, snug up the top cap bolt until its snug, and there is no play in the headset, then tighten up the stem bolts. It is common that after doing this and riding a few minutes, you may need to repeat the process.
18nm!?!? Holy balls, friend.
That is 10x as much torque, literally, as you need for this bolt. You just need enough to set a preload for the headset, and then you use the stem bolts to actually hold it together. 2-3nm is more than enough to set it before the stem bolts, and then literally hand tightening is good enough after.
Good news, it’s $3 for a new bolt. No big deal, and lesson learned.
And for future reference, unless it explicitly states the desired torque (which most parts will if they require moor oomph) assume 4-5nm is as tight as you should go for most small bike bolts.