Originally Posted by
caloso
I was rebuilding a bike (transferring over the group from my race bike after upgrading) and thought that the bolt was just like the bolt on a quill stem: just tighten the crap out of it. I took the bike out for a little spin and at one point took both hands off the bars. I nearly crashed.
I went back home and looked up Sheldon's page on threadless headsets. I still couldn't wrap my head around the way it worked but at least I got the part about not over tightening it.
My first contact with a threadless headset was about a year ago when I received my "new" bike in a box from an ebay purchase. I literally had never looked at a threadless headset. I'd probably seen them since I have ridden with guys on modern bikes in recent years, but hadn't actually looked at it or recognized any difference other than the different kind of stem.
So I looked at that thing and had no idea how to reassemble it (it had been taken apart for shipping).
LUCKILY, I somehow knew enough to post an inquiry somewhere on the world wide inteweb and was pointed to the Park Tool site. Or maybe I was familiar with the "how to's" on that site and looked for myself.
Anyway, after printing the instructions and carefully reading them, I realized that compared to what I was used to, having rebuilt headsets in the distant (i.e. 70s/80s) past this was dead easy to do. Interestingly I was unfamiliar with the term "preload" having always thought of it simply as "bearing adjustment". As soon as I realized that the end cap was for that ("bearing adjustment"), it became very clear what was needed. The idea of only tightening a bearing adjustment as much as necessary to prevent play was very familiar to me, especially the part of going easy, testing, then tightening a little more if necessary. Now I tend to do it by feel.
Short version: the Park tool instructions are pretty easy to follow.