Mixing the "wrong" headset/fork and stem

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:49:41 +0100
Richard Thrippleton wrote:

The main issue is adjustability; I don't want to have to buy spacers
and a new set of forks each time I feel like having higher or lower
handlebars. I recently started having ergonomic problems that had me
needing to have a much more upright riding posture. Solving this
would have been very costly had I not had a quill stem.

Why? With a flip-flop stem and an inch or so of spacers you can get as
much adjustment as with a regular quill stem, if you need more height
than that affords just fit an A'Head extender.

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:11:14 GMT
(Dennis Davis) wrote:

I too prefer quill stem technology. Mainly because I think modern
stems fitted to threadless forks are ugly when compared to quill
stems. Especially on a lightweight road bike. But then I'm an old
fart. What do I know?

There are some pretty sleek threadless stems available, like the
Thomson Elite. By their nature they're always going to look chunkier
than a 7/8" quill stem, and I'm in no hurry to replace the old Cinelli
kit on my road bike. The biggest problem that I see is there's no
gradual upgrade path - if at some point you can't get a threaded
headset or fork you need to replace both, you can use a threadless stem
with an adapter on threaded forks, but that has most of the
disadvantages of both systems and few of the advantages.

On 29/09/2008 16:49, Richard Thrippleton said,

The main issue is adjustability; I don't want to have to buy spacers and
a new set of forks each time I feel like having higher or lower
handlebars.

You've just hit one one of the advantages of threadless forks over quill
- changing the bar position is very, very easy with threadless. Why
do you think you need to buy new forks and spacers just to raise or
lower the bars? You can just rearrange the spacers that are already
there. If that doesn't give you enough adjustment, you can flip the
stem over, or pop in a new stem.

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:37:13 +0100
Paul Boyd wrote:

You've just hit one one of the advantages of threadless forks over
quill
- changing the bar position is very, very easy with threadless.

Not as easy as it is with a quill stem (assuming it hasn't seized).

On 29/09/2008 18:51, Rob Morley said,

Not as easy as it is with a quill stem (assuming it hasn't seized).

How about if you decide you want a little bit more reach? :-)

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:10:45 +0100
Paul Boyd wrote:

On 29/09/2008 18:51, Rob Morley said,

Not as easy as it is with a quill stem (assuming it hasn't seized).

How about if you decide you want a little bit more reach? :-)

You need to change the stem either way. With a quill stem you don't
need to adjust the headset on reassembly.

Pete Biggs wrote:
Richard Thrippleton wrote:

The main issue is adjustability; I don't want to have to buy
spacers and a new set of forks each time I feel like having higher
or lower handlebars.

You don't need to do that. Although it is slower to do so than with
a quill stem, you can adjust the height at any time by moving the
spacers. Spacers can be placed above as well as below the stem.
Just make sure the steerer is long enough to start with.
Would this entail obtaining a steerer separately and cutting it to
length, rather than being able to work with the steerer that came with a
shop bike? All the threadless equipped bikes I've seen in the wild have
had steerers cut short with the stem at the highest possible height
being a tiny distance away from the top of the head tube.

Richard

"Richard Thrippleton" wrote in message
...

All the threadless equipped bikes I've seen in the wild have had steerers
cut short with the stem at the highest possible height being a tiny
distance away from the top of the head tube.

You don't need to do that. Good bike shops will leave the steerer uncut.
Obviously if it is cut short, you've got no room to play - but the answer
there is to not buy such a thing.

cheers,
clive

On Sep 29, 4:03*pm, _
wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:52:47 +0100, Richard Thrippleton wrote:
Does anybody here have personal experience of using a quill stem with a
threadless steerer? I'm aware of a trick that Sheldon Brown used in
which the pressure on the top bearings is maintained by some kind of
pinch collar (seatpost clamp?), eliminating the cap at the top and the
spacers on the steerer. I'd assume that this leaves you with a steerer
in which you're free to insert a quill stem, rather than clamping a
new-style stem to the steerer. Can one get steerers in the appropriate
diameter? Are there any non-obvious pitfalls? Am I being dumb in some
other way?

I don't currently have any threadless forks to test this with. The
reason I ask is that I see a time in the future when it gets
increasingly hard to buy bicycles with threaded forks, and want to
continue using the (clearly superior) quill stem technology.

a) threaded forks are unlikely to be anything but easily available; and

b) it's all just metal - pinch clamps are easily made, forks are easily
threaded.

Don't worry.

"_" is a paedophile.

Nuxx Bar wrote:

"_" is a paedophile.
True or false, it is hardly appropriate to alert me. A paedophile is no
hostile moral hazard to me; as you can see by my posts in this thread, I
have already unambiguously stated my intent to firmly thrust my quill
into a very tight tube.

Regards,
Richard