adam

Heard some knocking from my front end this aft. on my ride so came home to adjust my headset. Loosened the two stem bolts and tightened the top cap. Well, after reading a few posts about the same thing - it looks like I tightened too much.

When I took the top cap off to see what's happening inside, I noticed that the starnut was sitting flush with the top of my fork and that a few of the sides of the starnut have been pressed down into the fork.

Tell me if I'm wrong - but I'm assuming I'll have to rip this star nut out and put a new one in? BTW, carbon fork with steel steerer (Wolf CL fork (not the recently recalled SL) on a Cervelo Team Soloist). Any easy way to remove it?



And yes... I have to get the rust off that steerer...

Edit: I originally thought it was an alu. steerer

AEO

how does an aluminum steerer with aluminum or carbon spacers and stem rust red?

usually they're not supposed to be removable.
I'd bend in the flanges that you can and have a shop hammer it in deeper so that they can install a new one.

idcruiserman

Normally you would drive it down the steerer tube, but it looks like it's pretty much out already. Hopefully the next one will stay in place . . .

Help from Park Tool

adam

I just read on the Cervelo forums that it's actually a steel steerer. Didn't know that...

Szczuldo

christ dude, how hard did you tighten it....That is intense, and you've got quite a bit of rust going there.

What you can do is take a drill bit which is just a bit larger than the threads and drill it out, the thing will fall apart and you can install the new one. Of course this would be hard if you don't own a drill.

on a second note, don't ride the bike in the rain or wipe it down after a rainy ride...

jonestr

you can just pound in a new star nut if you do not care about the minimal weight added. Otherwise just drill it out like a previous poster suggested, or, if you have a 2 bolts for your stem clamp onto the steerer tube, you could just bolt the lower bolt so that there is a significant amount of stem above the steerer tube and then put your stem cap back on and keep turning until the star fangled nut comes all the way out.

brianappleby

after pulling one star nut out I'd be weary of installing another one, maybe use a compression plug this time? Or maybe another star nut would be fine...

krusty

The wing on the right hand side is bent backward (down), while the ones more on the left are bent in the correct manner. This indicates that the star nut was likely not originally installed centered. It appears the nut is slightly to the left of center, allowing the right hand wing to fold backward when it was overtightened and the nut slipped upward. Even bending of all the wings is achieved only when the nut is centered.

Even the proper tool does not center the nut when being driven in. I suspect that if you tighten the stem on the steerer as if you had placed another spacer underneath (proper torque only, and not too high), then put the cap on and tighten the bolt, the nut will pop out the remaining distance. It's almost out already.

You will need a new nut. If possible, try to get a Campy one, as they have guides built onto the bottom of them to center them as they are inserted.

adam

Well, got out my drill tonight and planned to go nuts on drilling out the star nut. Grabbed some pliers to see if I could do anything by pulling on it and with a tiny bit of effort it came right out. Fantastic.

Went by the LBS to get a new one today and low and behold, they gave me a 1" instead of a 1 1/8th.

Will be attempting to put it in tomorrow hopefully myself. Will have to read up on installation...

adam

Oh, and cleaned up the steerer nicely as well - got rid of all that rust.

jonestr

hope you have the proper tools for the job

marqueemoon

You can pretty much do this with stuff you have around the house and some patience.

z415

It is VERY to install hard without the right tool. I've tried and I had to correct using the right tool - luckily I hadn't driven it in too far for the tool to reach.

Simoni

They wear me out too.

adam

Seeing as I have the fork off and the wrong sized star nut, when I take the nut back to the shop, I'm probably just going to have them pound the new one in.

adam

Man, this shouldn't be that difficult...

Went to two LBS's today and they couldn't do anything because they thought the 'thin walled' steel steerer needed a special size diameter star nut. When I called the shop that I bought the bike from (45 mins away, so I didn't go there originally) they said that they have heard of this problem before and that I'll have to get a 1 1/8 star nut and pry the flanges back a bit to make sure it sticks.

pain in the ass...