When I unscrew the top I can pull the rod all the way out and the wedge piece is stuck and I can’t move the stem at all. It’s crooked and I need to straighten it.
Heres a pic of the offending stem, and below it a pic of the type of wedge it is. How can I loosen it to get it out?

Screw the bolt all the way into the wedge then loosen the bolt about 1/4". Tap the head of the bolt with a rubber mallet or a steel hammer with a block of wood to protect the bolt. This will push the wedge out. You may need to give it a few good hard whacks to get it to move.

What he said.

Give the bolt a good solid whack, tapping may not work, you need to break the wedge loose from its taper.

Rubber mallet worked. Took 2 decent whacks and could definitely tell when it popped out. Thanks! Should I put grease around the wedge and inside the stem? Or would that make it slip too much and not hold enough like it should?

Anti-seize is your friend. Once you torque it down, most will displace except a little in the micro-valleys in the metal. That'll keep it from seizing (hopefully) but it will stay in place.

To add to that, try to keep the anti-seize on the top of the cone nut so it's not on the stem's mating surface with the steerer tube - but don't leave the stem bare either. I usually put a light coat of grease skimmed over the surface to prevent the steel steerer and aluminum stem from corroding together (once that happens, they're pretty inseparable).

-Kurt

My attitude is the more the merrier. I use Park's ASC-1, and liberally coat every surface that may be in contact with another surface, whether there is a galvanic mismatch or not. After I assemble and torque, I just wipe off the excess that squeezed out.

That usually works - but I've had some cases of really smooth stems not grabbing the inside of an equally smooth steerer tube (and yes, I can guarantee these were not French 22.0 stem vs. 22.2mm mismatch issues), and I'm wary of over-torquing the expander and bulging the steerer.

Hence, the careful approach when the situation calls for it.

-Kurt

P.S. to the OP: Super envious of that Raleigh Super Tourer. Would really like to find one someday.

I'm with the grease crowd. Anti-Seize is a little more long lasting but is a big mess to clean off especially when it gets on your hands if you have to do a mid-ride adjustment. Either will work fine though.

One of the local shops put silver anti-seize on the seatposts of the fleet of kids training bicycles our non-profit operates. The seatposts are slightly roughly finish aluminum that's popular today, so cleaning the seatpost isn't enough - it'll just grab more anti-seize from the inside of the seattube. We've never been able to completely clean them out, and after three years, and we're still getting silver grease over ourselves.

I consider that silver anti-seize a subliminal middle finger from the mechanics of the shop.*

-Kurt

*My breaking point was when they took off the chain guides on one of the bikes (it was a 7x1 that needed a crankset swap), and threw on another crankset without a bash guard or chain guides. Hey, dum-dum...kids are using these things. Chains WILL pop off.

A satisfied noobie, within minutes a solution is had.

Rather than metallic anti-seize, which is intended primarily for high-temperature service like exhaust system studs and nuts, I use Tef-Gel, which contains PTFE (Teflon), and is specifically intended for use on dissimilar metal joints.