Chris King Loose Headset

sansabar said:

I'm changing frames and the one I am changing to has a Chris King threadless headset. It has a little bit of back and forth wobble to it. How do I tighten it up?

Depends. Threaded or otherwise?

Retro Grouch said:

Depends. Threaded or otherwise?

Threadless. It's like the bearing cap has too much space. Never had to adjust one before and don't want to make things worse.

sansabar said:

Threadless. It's like the bearing cap has too much space. Never had to adjust one before and don't want to make things worse.

The short answer is to first loosen the clamp bolts between the stem and the steerer tube and then adjust the bearing preload with the top cap bolt. When the bearing preload is right retightening the stem clamp holds the adjustment.

From your description I'm thinking that you might have another problem. Sometimes the top cap bottoms against the steerer tube and won't push the stem down to preload the headset. If that's the case, you can either install a small stack spacer either above or below the stem (either will work), or cut the steerer tube a little shorter.

King makes a great headset. Once set, you'll essentially never need to worry about it. Excellent product.

Retro Grouch said:

The short answer is to first loosen the clamp bolts between the stem and the steerer tube and then adjust the bearing preload with the top cap bolt. When the bearing preload is right retightening the stem clamp holds the adjustment.

From your description I'm thinking that you might have another problem. Sometimes the top cap bottoms against the steerer tube and won't push the stem down to preload the headset. If that's the case, you can either install a small stack spacer either above or below the stem (either will work), or cut the steerer tube a little shorter.

Thanks. I'll give that a shot. I may have been doing it backwards by tightening the clamp bolts first before the preload was set.