Quilll stem moving around?
Thread started by
general ganja at 11.7.09 - 5:31 pm
Thought I'd ask a technical question. Anyway, I've been on a brief hiatus after breaking my shoulder during a Taco Tuesday ride late August due to mechanical issues. I pretty much lost steering when mashing off my seat and attempting to skid.
Anyway, since I've been getting better, I've decided to start figuring out what was wrong with my bike. I initially thought it was my quill stem since the drops were able to move around when holding the front wheel in place. So I tried a different stem and it was doing the same thing. I took the fork out and checked out the inside of it for any wear and it seemed fine. These seem like the only culprits to my drops moving around, so thought I should ask ya'll for any more suggestions. Thanks!
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your wedge nut isn't grabbing the steerer tube. probably. find a wedge nut with more knurl to it.
mmaceda11.7.09 - 5:33 pm
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find a matt with more gnar to it.
KiMS1 responding to a
comment by mmaceda
11.7.09 - 6:07 pm
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bring it to a shop...any shop... or co-op... somewhere that you can have it checked... do you mean the whole unit (stem and handlebar) is moving... or do you mean that only the handlebar is moving and the stem is still in place?
adrian11.8.09 - 1:14 am
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Your steerer tube could be bowed out from the quill stem expander wedge. How old is this bike? I had a similar crash in which I locked the wheel to skid, but the bars turned 90 degrees and I got slammed to the ground. After that, no matter how hard I tightened the wedge, the stem would creak and move when I stomped on the pedals. The fork was done. The cause was a combination of overtightening the stem expander wedge bolt and the stress from wrenching on the handlebars while trying to stop the bike.
If you need a new fork, think about converting the headset to threadless. Less weight, more stiffness, better component selection, easy to change bar and stems cause you don't have to unwrap the bar tape, etc. I did this on my road bike and dropped about 1/2 pound.
richbell11.8.09 - 1:36 am
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Richbell hit it right on. Before my spill, I heard a great amount of creaking when cranking hard so I am pretty certain that my steerer tube slowly deteriated. It is an old 94 quintana roo kilo 650 frameset so I'm now pretty certain that it is the fork. It's just weird that when I inspected the tube, it looked fine and I suppose I was looking for cracks or signs of rust, but it's evident that I've over tightened the nut many times. I guess I'll be looking for another 650 threaded fork since going with a whole new threadless setup would burn deeper holes in my pockets at the moment due to being on disability so long.
Thanks for your input everyone!
general ganja11.8.09 - 10:57 am
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