[CR]Technomic & Headsets

(Example: Humor:John Pergolizzi)

From: "ternst" <ternst1@cox.net>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:21:06 -0800
Subject: [CR]Technomic & Headsets

We've been using the tall stems over 20 years. When we couldn't get the 195s we used the 225s,as needed. If they were too long and conventional stems too short, we cut them off, filed them nice and smooth, matched the angle, and installed them. We've never had one come loose and we custom fit our height as needed. We had to cut and rethread the bolt to the new length but that was easy.The smaller the frame the less vertical adjustment possible so a nice fit of the bike to the rider's needs was most important. Voila! It is nice to fit the proper headset thread to the steerer tube threading. Its not too critical with the quality control in fork thread cutting and usually doesn't affect adjustment. Occasionally one can feel the thread difference but we never had any adjustment problems. It depends on how your level of absolute correctness wants to be. I know some guys who when overhauling hubs, bb's, and headsets with loose ball bearings would take apart carefully so that every bearing would go back in the same order it was in the race! Campy once claimed that ther headset had such critical tolerance that they recommended adjusting the headset with the stem tightened before doing the headset,so the tightening of the stem wouldn't snug up the bearings. They talked about this when I was in Europe over 40 years ago! Ted Ernst