i know im gonna get yelled at for not searching...but i did...and rather than waste an hr of my time...im gonna waqste 5 mins of all yours

can i put my aluminum 26mm diameter bars in a 25.8 mm clamp?...

i mention aluminum because steel might form to fit...could i have seriosu issues with alluminum? or at all?

thanks

Does the stem a removable front plate? If so, you should be ok.

i jammed my aluminum time trial bars into a too small old school stem, i didn't realise i should be worried? i guess now that i think about it, having my bars suddenly collapse during an "Epic Skid" wouldn't be too pretty....

you are only looking at a difference of 0.2mm in this case..if the stem has a front plate, the only difference will be a slight gap between the plate and the rest of the stem. If the bars were a perfect fit, the plate would make contact with the stem.

Deadly Downtube - how badly did you "jam" these bars? Please give more details...sounds more like defective bars than anything.

yeah...removable plate...awesome...thx

No worries.

I routinely fit 26ers in 25.4 stems (because I have a few old Nitto stems on my bikes) without problems. It just takes judicious sweating and cursing as I try to prize open the clamp and slide the bar in. It ain't pretty, but I can't say it's caused any issues. 25.8 is probably a compromise stem int he first place, to fit both 25.4 or 26.0 bars.

take your allen key stick it in the allen bolt ,pull it out and slide in the bars ,,YES to your answer,

S/F,
CEYA!

i know i CAN do it...but i wasnt sure is i SHOULD do it

aight...now i WILL

thanks

i've jammed bars into stems juuuust too small.... some metal dust slides out, but no problems as i can see just yet.

If you've got a stem with non-removeable face plate (old style), be careful to open it as wide as possible before shoving bars in there. If you're putting aluminum bars into steel stem you can score the aluminum pretty badly with shoving and twisting. That creates great perforations along which your bars would love to break catastrophically.

Yeah, exactly. They're called stress risers and alu loves to concentrate stresses along them and snap with not too much warning.

QP, you probably pushed a 26.0mm bar into a 25.4mm stem. Short of replacing the bars, there's not much to do now, just keep your ears open for a creaking sound coming from your bars.

Even Sheldon Brown agrees that 25.8mm and 26.0mm are perfectly copacetic. Check it.

"fat guy in a little coat"

huh.

thought that was coming from my headset. it's pretty squeeky and who knows how old.

huh.

that might be a good reason to lay down a few bucks for some more shiny new parts...

just did this last week.

put a couple scratches in the paint on my cheapo syntace bullhorns.

also a couple light scratches in the aluminum.

Should I be worried?