On Dec 24, 2008, at 10:53 AM, Jeremy Till wrote:
> Frankly, i'm a surprised that this topic has brought up so many > arguments on both sides. I always thought that 1" threaded headsets > and quill stems were a Rivendell "thing," as integral to the identity > of the bikes as steel and lugs (excepting the Legolas, of course). I > wouldn't ask GP to change that. I'm cool with that and appreciate the > bikes for other reasons, and I know that if i ever own one it'll > probably have a threaded headset. > > I'm firmly in the threadless camp (3 bikes, all threadless, 2 even > with the "illusive" 1" threadless! no, headsets are not impossible to > find, and most stems come with a shim to make it work), but i'll > readily admit that my preference is mostly psychosomatic*. I'm a big > guy, mostly ride fixed gear, and i like the idea of wrenching on a > bar/ > stem that's firmly clamped to the outside of a circular steel steerer > tube more than one that is literally wedged into place. From a mechanical perspective, clamping the stem around the steerer tube is a better design than a quill stem. The quill rocks inside the steerer, the wedge may bulge or weaken the steerer causing it to crack, stems with conical expanders tend to break at the slot in the quill, etc. And of course there is the infamous stem frozen into the steerer by corrosion (I've fortunately never had that happen to one of my bikes, but saw it many times at bike shops where I worked). I have two problems with threadless stems. First, most of them are butt-ugly. Fugly even. Big, fat, anodized or painted tubes sticking up at ungainly angles. I really hate the looks of the ones with removable face plates (BTW the two-bolts face plates are dangerous; use the 4 bolt ones to provide redundancy in case a bolt breaks). But that's a subjective opinion based on taste. The second is mechanical. The stem clamp is used to maintain the bearing preload of the headset. This is initially set with the 5 mm Allen bolt in the stem cap, but the preload is held by the stem's pinch bolts. In a crash or even just from the bike getting knocked over, if the bars get knocked askew you can't just twist them back into alignment without gumming up the bearing preload. Out with the Allen wrenches and ten minutes of fiddling with it instead of riding. Is this actually a big issue? Probably not, I've never heard people who use threadless stems moaning about it. I think the best solution is the one used by the old French constructeurs, who were making "threadless" stems 50 years before MTBs discovered them. The headset was threaded as per usual, but the stem was clamped onto a tube brazed into the steerer. If I went "threadless," this is the system I'd use. Interestingly, the constructeurs went back to the standard quill design after a decade or two because of the adjustability issue. Also Tom Ritchey made bikes with clamped-on stems in the 70s- at which time Jobst criticized the design because it was non-standard and could be hard to fix in the boonies; Jobst has since come around to seeing threadless stems as the superior design; you can get replacement parts almost anywhere in the world now. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
