Before my ride this past weekend, I checked my headset. It felt like there was a little play so I loosened the stem bolts, gave the pre-load nut a partial turn then tightened everything back up.

I had ridden about 12 miles and was almost to my turnaround point. I was coasting about 15 mph on a slight decline and did a few quick weaves (1 foot or two each way) for fun. Immediately I felt a strange sensation...it was almost like I was working against a gyroscopic force to return the bike to middle. You know how you spin a wheel off the bike while you're holding the hub and have to work to hold the thing straight? It was that feeling through the whole bike.

At first I thought my rear tire was down but it looked fine. I quickly thought about the adjustment I had made prior to ride and figured that I'd overtightened the headset. So I got off my bike, took out my trusty multi-tool and did a complete reset of my headset setting. The bike rode perfectly the rest of the way.

Just thought I'd share the sensation in case anyone else get's that same feeling during their ride.

Just wondering what kind of wheels u have, sometimes when the wheels arent that stiff u can feel that. if u are a 200 pounds guy riding a 24 spokes weels, if u turns and stuff like that the wheel goes out of the center (per say) and u feel weird stuff as the one u felt.

hope that help u a little bit.

I'm concerned about that too. I just put a new headset on a Surly Steamroller and I'm concerned that maybe I got it snugged up a little too much. How do you know? I imagine that's a difficult question to answer. I have a lot of strength in my hands and always seem to overdo it unintentionally. I just used a regular hex key to do the job. Is it possible to damage the headset or anything else topside?

yes

Can it take some torque or do they damage easily?

If they're the original bearings, chances are the bearing retainer is damaged. Take out the retainer, add some bearing to make up for lost room, and adjust it. It's a headache to do, use lots of grease, it acts like a glue for bearings.

What type of headset bearings do you have? If it has either loose balls or balls in a retainer there should be no preload, just set the top bolt tight enough to remove all play but no further.

If it has cartridge bearings, the preload recommendation varies by manufacturer but is usually in the range of 10 - 20 inch-pounds.

While I'm just sub-200 pound, I run 32 spoke Open Pros. Love 'em. The headset is a Cane Creek S3. Using both Park Tools and Sheldon Brown instructions, I check over tightening by lifting the front wheel off the ground and making sure the handlebars can "flop" from side to side w/o resistance. I check under tightening by grabbing the headtube and lifting up and down on the fork to feel for play.

To check if headset is too tight:

-Hold the bike by the fork blades - just above or below the brake bosses.
-Lift the front wheel off the ground and rotate the fork left and right, repeatedly, several times, while you feel for the vibrations generated by the bearings turning within the headset.
-If it's too tight, it will feel stiff and like it's grinding.
-It's kind of something you have to develop a touch for -- like adjusting cup-and-cone bearing races so you remove the play without overtightening.

...taking it one step further...How about the pinch bolts on the stem/steering tube? I found torque specs and will adhere to those in the future but, can you damage that puppy by tightening the two pinch bolts on a (threadless) stem too tight?

This is a painful subject for me as years ago I overtightened my headset and crashed when I took my hands off the bars to stretch - the wheel began to turn and I couldn't lean it back the other direction. Rang my bell big time.

A couple notes: DSTRONG - the sensation you felt may have been the result of overtightening AND a damaged bearing, which could bind to a greater degree and non-uniformly. If your headset was loose for some time, bearings may be damaged. You don't say if you checked your headset for binding prior to resetting it. Additionally, headset cups can become warped by too loose a headset and big pothole interactions.

Holding the headtube and pulling on the fork may not tell you if the bearings are properly loaded. You may not feel play, but the headset may still be too loose, although not much. As GINSOAKEDBOY says, it's a touch. Loosen, tighten, loosen, tighten until you get no play and no binding, a little tighter than just no obvious play, but smooth rotation. Also, if you didn't loosen the bearing load screw in the headcap before you tightened it the first time, you may have overtightened. After I load the bearings and tighten the stem bolts, I tighten the headcap bolt so it doesn't loosen up (with the stem tight, it won't tighten the bearing load).

WHARFRAT - you definitely can and will damage the steertube if it is carbon and you over-tighten the stem bolts, but you are unlikely to damage a steel or alloy steerer, but you may strip the threads in the stem.

You probably won't damage the stem that way but if you have a carbon steerer, maybe even a very light alloy steerer, you could easily damage them.

Just FYI, this is exactly what happened to me a couple times when I over-tightened the headsets of a couple of bikes. If you ask me, this is a tell-tale sign that the headset preload is too high.

Zombie Thread alert!

This thread had been asleep since 2007.

And the peanut gallery has been around since man first crawled into existence. Do you know how old that is, Jan?

It only took twelve years to produce that enormous amount of content.