Knucklehead ? of day--securing headset

[BigDaddySmooth]

Guys,
I'm having a ****ens of a time trying to secure my King threadless top cap, stem, headset apparatus. The carbon fork steerer tube has been cut to the minimum to just allow the stem and top cap to engage and I have secured it best I can but I still have some looseness/play. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . that you have a (carbon) (fork steerer tube)

OR . . .

. . . that you have a (carbon fork) (steerer tube) that's made of something else?

Not sure what to tell you if it's a carbon tube, since I don't have one of those. don't they require a special type of star nut?

But if it's Titanium by chance like my F1, my mech put two star nuts in it to get it to grip the Ti. Otherwise, when I tightened the top nut it just pulled the star nut out.

BBD

[djcwardog]

I have a Serotta F2 fork with a 1 1/8" carbon steerer tube. I also have the expanding retainer that is required instead of a star nut when securing a carbon steerer tube to your head tube... Star nuts are only for metal steerer tubes - they will destroy your carbon steerer tube from the inside if you try to use them... Stick with (or go buy) the expanding retainer system. This is the part that looks like pie slices held together by a rubber O-ring. The center of the "pie" is drilled and tapped for your top screw...

Anyway, I posted a few weeks ago about this as a technical issue and what I did. From the replies I got, it turns out that what I did is the norm: you have to put the bike on the ground, straddle the frame and sit on the top tube enough to apply some weight thereby taking up all slack between your crown race and the lower headset bearings (wheels in place of course). You then use a pipe or (much better!) a crown race driver to CAREFULLY tap on the top of your top race to snug it up to the bearings - and down on the carbon tube. Suggested also was to apply paraffin wax to the area to allow the top race to slide easier. Then you continue the assembly process by inserting your spacers, stem and stem cap (leaving the stem bolts loose for now). Now you secure the stem cap by inserting and tightening the top screw in order to "adopt" the adjustment you just made rather crudely with the CR driver and hammer. Finally, you position the stem properly over the front wheel (centered - not left or right...) and tighten its securing bolts. Job done! Note that the CK top race fit is snug (by design?) even though there is an O-ring inside that CK top race which is what is actually contacting the exterior of your carbon steerer tube. Once I did this, all slop went away and the steering is sublime. However, I was left with a nagging feeling that if one of the technical merits of going to the threadless headset is to allow micro adjustment of bearing preload, then I sure missed that feature with the CK model when I had to resort to careful preload adjustment using a crown race driver and a hammer!

[Bradford]

Ask Dirt, he is the expert in loose headsets.