[elvisVerde]

the last theory I heard was that the earlier crash damaged the steerer, and ultimately the steerer broke and George never got to Roubaix. So I started thinking about stems and steerers and while none of this thinking would necessarily have done anything for someone in George's situation, I did begin to wonder...

While I think that it is OK on mountain bikes, I have just never been happy about the whole aheadset/threadless steerer thing on roadbikes. It is about looks mostly, but this crash has made me think....

Back in the day, when you crashed your bike and bashed your bars on the tarmac, your handlebars rotated a bit because you never made the quill stem all that tight, and you could just get up, hold the wheel between your knees straighten things out and away you went. The adjustment of the headset was independent of how tight the stem was.

So here is the question: is there a similar thing with threadless steerer/stems. Can you adjust the headset and leave the stem bolts a slight bit loose so that the bars can rotate without breaking something? Is this done? Have I just not heard the news?

 

[bikeboy389]

As far as I know, the only way you can get your threadless headset properly tensioned and still have your stem clamp relatively loose is if you use a USE Ring-go-star. It's a device designed for specifically that purpose, though I only vaguely understand its use.

But I encourage you to remember that the main reason people were so shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, about what happened to Georgie is that most of us have never seen, or even heard of, such a thing happening. Why? Because it's very rare. Even in this instance it happened after this very powerful rider already crashed once before, and during one of the most bike-battering events in the roadracing world.

Don't go panicking and changing your headset just because of Georgie's wreck--it's a very unusual happening in a very unusual circumstance.

My own theory of the break is that his first crash actually loosened things so that there was a minute gap between his spacers and stem, putting a lot of stress directly under the stem clamp--eventually causing the break. If I'm right (and there's no way to know that--or even reason to assume it), then it was the fact that the clamp was loose enough to slip that caused the problem, not the reverse!

 

[elviento]

Only matters if the fork suffered mostly a ROTATING FORCE.

Otherwise, makes no difference. In fact, between a threadless setup and a threaded setup, if of the same weight, the threadless setup will be undoubtedly stronger. Imagine the weight of the friggin' iron wedge.