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Spacer Question

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Old 09-03-14 | 10:23 PM
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Spacer Question

I've been moving my stem down, one spacer at a time, but this last time, it seems like there is less room above the stem on the steerer for the spacer that was below the stem.
Does each spacer move from the bottom of the stem, to above the stem, every time you make an adjustment?
Thanks.

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Old 09-03-14 | 10:52 PM
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Your question is confusing but you should maintain the same amount of spacers unless you cut the steerer. The spacers above the stem should be a few mm above the steerer/star nut so you can get proper preload on the headset.
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Old 09-03-14 | 11:19 PM
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Yeah, I got it. It just seemed like there was very little fork steerer tube for the top spacer to seat.
I checked the tightness on the top cap several times. Easy movement of steering and silent when bounced.
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Old 09-04-14 | 05:08 AM
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Some spacers have grooves on one side and ridges on the other that fit together to "lock" the stack together. If you put them in the wrong order or upside down you could take up more space than was intended.
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Old 09-04-14 | 10:02 PM
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Here is a scenario to consider. If you took your fork in to get the steerer tube cut and you said, "Leave this 1cm spacer on top," you might have a steerer tube cut with a 4mm gap between the top of the steerer tube and the top of the 1cm spacer. As long as you used that big spacer, you'd be fine. Now suppose that you wanted to move a 5mm spacer from below the stem to above. If you put the 1cm spacer on top first, then you'd only see 1mm of steerer tube peeking out over the top of it. It would be tough to get the 5mm spacer to work above the 1cm one. The solution would be to put the 5mm spacer on first, but you might first run into the problem that I think the OP was having. A lot depends on the spacers and the nature of the steerer tube cut.
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