my cromo frame has a rigid fork and uses a quill stem, i want a flatter and longer stem, but I don't know how to replace such on my bike. my other frame has a steerer tube and clamp-style stem which makes a lot more sense in terms of install. How do i take out my existing quill stem and install another quill stem in its place? What tools do i need? Thanks in advance:confused:

You need an allen key.
Some stems are front-loading, so you can leave brakes etc on you handlebars, but with most, you insert the bars from the side, so remove all grips and controls from your bars.

Loosen the stem within the fork:
Rotate the allen key on top of the stem no more than 2 rotations (If you turn more, the wedge at the bottom will fall out).
Tap the allen key gently with a piece of hardwood, to push the wedge down.
Turn the handlebars sideways, holding the front wheel.
The stem can just be wiggled out upwards.
Before you do this, tighten the allen bolt a little and loosen the bars in the stem.
Undo the clamping bolt and rotatate the bars a little. They may be stuck due to corrosion. Retighten, then remove bar and stem from the fork.

Be careful not to scratch the bars when you take the old stem off, or put the new one on. You may need to rotate the stem on the bars at corners.

When you put the new stem in, put a dab of grease/antisieze on all surfaces which touch metal. Smear a little grease along the central bolt and wedge to rustproof them.

tFUnk,
If you want to simplify things for the future you can replace the quill stem with a quill to threadless adapter that installs the same way as a quill stem, then use threadless stems with the two screw bar clamp such as you apparently have on your other bike.

There is nothing wrong with quill stems, but I am often swapping bars or stems so this type of setup works better for me.
Regards,
Raymond

There are quill stems with removable faceplates,and if you are lucky and have enough cable length to play with you can often remove flat type bars from single bolt clamps by removing the grips and controls from one side.

thanks for the help guys, right now i am either looking at a quill with removable face or a threadless conversion.

Keep in mind, though, that quill stems come in many different bar diameter sizes. I have one of those profile front-load stems, but it only really works with one diameter. I've bought shims before, but they really don't seem to work at all well.

Taking the rigd fork reference in the original post to imply mtb setup the clamp diameter is 25.4mm or 28.6 for the newer oversize versions. If road bars, the range is 25.4 to 31,8.It pays to measure. Couriously enough,ahead type stems also come in the same range of clamp diameters.

thanks guys, i'm looking to get a profile boa quill stem but no place has them for cheap anymore. either that or i will get a converter, which i actually prefer but again, these parts aren't exactly easy to find. thanks for teaching me how to take off the quill though!