erichkopp

I made a post the otherday about not being able to shim my bars enough for them to be properly clamped down. Come to find out after a really close inspection, my bars (bullhorns) are slipping inside the center larger-diameter sleeve. Has anyone ever had this happen? How would I go about fixing that? I was thinking JB Weld or something like that, but I doubt that'll hold for long.

JanMM

Picture?

bikeman715

try a shim .

_dhan_

I've never had that happen to me. maybe cut off the center sleeve, knurl the bar, and use the center sleeve as a shim? sounds pretty dangerous though.

HillRider

Once the collar has begun to slip, the bars pretty much have to be replaced. You can try JB Weld if you can get it between the collar and bar or try a strong grade of "Green" Loctite which will wick into the gap. My expectation is that neither will work adequately.

LWaB

Had it happen once and it took a little while to find.

Some cheap alloy bars have the sleeve slotted under the clamp to allow the sleeve to be crimped onto the bar by the stem. It would be easy to stuff things up though. Personally, I'd ditch the bars.

Torchy McFlux

+1 for trashing/recycling the bars.

Once that sleeve breaks loose, there's no saving them. Don't jury-rig handlebars. They're too important to your safety.

dabac

I'd have a go at it with loctite 603. Used industrially to keep bushings in place it seems like it'd have a fair chance of working. Available in small volumes too. https://65.213.72.112/tds5/docs/603-EN.pdf

carpediemracing 

+1

I've seen maybe half a dozen like that in the time I was in the shop, and most of them were under riders who were lucky not to have ended up in the hospital.

One guy rode for a while after screwing in two screws into the bars. They'd go through the outer/clamp sleeve and into the inner bar tube. No telling what would happen if the screws broke though.

I'd replace the bars. I don't mess with bars, stems, forks, front wheels. Anything fails there and you're down hard, and since they usually fail when there's a lot of stress, it'll be when you hit that little pothole at 45 mph on a descent that whatever it is will break. Your face/neck area is too fragile to risk it, at least for me it is.

For a good cycling related 100% post-consumer use for those bars, bolt them up onto a joist or some beam/bar/wall-over-door (bolt into the studs for the last one). Old bars make excellent pull up bars. We'd put one up as soon as we could in the shop/s I was in (4 total different locations). You do a pull up or two every now and then and suddenly you're all competing at doing 6-10 pull ups or more when at the beginning only one seemed tough.

cdr

ps I have to admit, I was the guy with the screws. I used the strongest little screws I could find, but after thinking about it for a while, I replaced the bars.