ITM Millenium bar/stem slipping

Tom Wright said:

Hi,

I've been using an ITM Millenium bar and stem, both new, for the past few months, and despite
tightening the allen bolts on the stem pretty much as far as I can with a small allen-key, the
bars slowly rotate round after a few rides, so that instead of the drops sloping upwards away from
the ends of the bars, they finish up level.

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort
I remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to?

I doubt it will fix the problem as you will be increasing the internal diameter of the stem clamp.

Have you tried shimming it with a piece of Coke can? This is de rigeur for tri-bars, which
often slip.

Tom Wright <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I've been using an ITM Millenium bar and stem, both new, for the past few months, and despite
tightening the allen bolts on the stem pretty much as far as I can with a small allen-key, the
bars slowly rotate round after a few rides, so that instead of the drops sloping upwards away from
the ends of the bars, they finish up level.

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort
I remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to?

Tom , you can use rosin (powdered resin), chalk or granulated sugar on the bar/stem interface. That
should stop the slippage nicely.

Tom Wright may have said:

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort I
remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to?

Yes. It will make the hole bigger, and may make the problem worse. Anodized surfaces, in my
experience, end to grab each other rather than sliding freely anyway, so removing the anodizing
doesn't seem likely to be fruitful in any event.

Before you blame the clamp or the bar, though, try threading the bolts into the stem without the
clamp cap in place. to make sure that the bolts aren't bottoming in the holes before they get the
bar tightly clamped. I've only seen this be a problem once, but the guy across the street lost 20
years' worth of hair trying to find what was wrong before we spotted that.

Otherwise, three solutions present themselves in my opinion:

- Use a shim between the clamp and the bar. As noted elsewhere, soft drink cans are usually
good for this.

- As suggested already, increase the friction in the clamp by introducing some other foreign
substance; not my favorite method, but it usually works. The only time I used this technique, I
used some water-based lapping compound. It worked, but I won't say that I was proud of it.

- Increase the clamping capability of the cap by filing a little off of the flat faces to allow it
to clamp together farther. Definitely a barnyard fix. not for the timid.

If the bar has rotated several times, I'd also consider swapping out to a different bar; you may
have received one that's just a trifle soft, in which case none of these fixes are guaranteed to
work. If it still rotates after either shimming or resizing (try the former *first*, in my opinion!)
then it's likely that the bar is just too soft to clamp and hold.

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail. Yes, I have a killfile. If I
don't respond to something, it's also possible that I'm busy. Words processed in a facility that
contains nuts.

Tom: If you've got a compatible bar & stem (which, when they're the same brand, seems likely!), and
they've been slipping, then something's not right with the combo... so why go to all manner of
trouble trying to make something work instead of returning it for something different?

Your life depends upon your bar & stem working correctly, and you paid good money for something that
ought to work. Unless you've done something nasty to them during installation, I doubt you'll have
any trouble at all having the shop exchange them for something else.

I'm somewhat fascinated by the various "solutions" proposed, with nobody suggesting that such
solutions shouldn't be needed in the first place.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles chainreactionbicycles.comchainreactionbicycles.comOpen ↗

"Tom Wright" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I've been using an ITM Millenium bar and stem, both new, for the past few months, and despite
tightening the allen bolts on the stem pretty much as far as I can with a small allen-key, the
bars slowly rotate round after a few rides, so that instead of the drops sloping upwards away from
the ends of the bars, they finish up level.

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort
I remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to?

Thanks very much,

Tom Wright

Tom Wright said:

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort I
remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to?

I've had good luck with just a piece of cloth sandpaper. I think it may be called emory cloth. You
can either wrap the bar in the strip of sand cloth or glue a piece on either half of the barclamp.

[email hidden] (Dave Thompson) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Tom Wright <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I've been using an ITM Millenium bar and stem, both new, for the past few months, and despite
tightening the allen bolts on the stem pretty much as far as I can with a small allen-key, the
bars slowly rotate round after a few rides, so that instead of the drops sloping upwards away
from the ends of the bars, they finish up level.

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface
between bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a
last resort I remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This
sounds like a good idea - is there any reason not to?

Tom , you can use rosin (powdered resin), chalk or granulated sugar on the bar/stem interface.
That should stop the slippage nicely.

Dear Dave,

I'm fascinated.

I can understand the rosin, since I use it for a violin bow--it's faintly sticky.

The chalk seems wrong, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it seems more like the graphite powder used as a
dry lubricant for keys? I think of it as a lubricant on my fingers when I'm shooting pool, but then
I use it on the leather end of the cue for--for--well, I'm vaguely under the impression that I chalk
the end of the cue for a better grip, so I seem to using it as a lubricant one way and a
non-lubricant the other.

But the granulated sugar leaves me without any ideas at all. Is it sticky? Just working as a spacer?
Easy to flush out because it dissolves in water?

Please tell me more, if you have any explanations up your sleeve. If not, maybe other posters will
address the matter?

Thanks,

Carl Fogel

Tom Wright said:

I've been using an ITM Millenium bar and stem, both new, for the past few months, and despite
tightening the allen bolts on the stem pretty much as far as I can with a small allen-key, the
bars slowly rotate round after a few rides, so that instead of the drops sloping upwards away from
the ends of the bars, they finish up level.

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort
I remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to?\

Yes that is a reasonable thing to do _if_ you are committed to that stem.

Personally, I would just get a stem that doesn't slip with normal bolt torque . . .

--
Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org Open every day since 1 April, 1971

fttwjunk-<< I've been using an ITM Millenium bar and stem, both new, for the past few months, and
despite tightening the allen bolts on the stem pretty much as far as I can with a small allen-key,
the bars slowly rotate round after a few rides, so that instead of the drops sloping upwards away
from the ends of the bars, they finish up level.

I've greased the bolts and washers, and made sure that there is no grease on the interface between
bars and stem. I recently asked the LBS for some advice, and they suggested that as a last resort I
remove the anodising from the inside face of the stem with wet-and-dry paper. This sounds like a
good idea - is there any reason not to? >><BR><BR>

Go to a bike shop that has a knurling tool and 'lightly' knurl the area that is on the stem.
Lightly, don't want to ask for cracks...

Peter Chisholm Vecchio's Bicicletteria 1833 Pearl St. Boulder, CO, 80302
(303)440-3535 vecchios.comvecchios.comOpen ↗ "Ruote convenzionali costruite eccezionalmente bene"