Empty Boxes & a DOH! Moment

So it seems I am well and truly on the final stretch. All my boxes are empty. Which means all the contents are on the bike. Yahooooo!

But before I get too much ahead of myself, and you. Much to the disappointment of some of my riding brethren, it is not quite yet ready to Heckle the trails of Sydney and beyond. I need to do the following still:

• File down the steerer
• Tune the gears
• Affix cable caps to stop fraying
• Apply protection
• Relocate the Gravity Dropper from the Giant to the Heckler
• Shorten Cables (not necessary pre-ride)
• Final once over and tightening

So, the steerer. A fairly straight forward job. Upon consultation with a few mates, not 100% necessary, but I thought I would do it anyway, and I am sure what I am about to tell you is punishment for making that decision.

I removed the headset, took out the fork and filed down. Remember in a previous post I mentioned the cut I did was not completely straight. Being careful not to get the iron filings in all the workings of the bike, about 10minutes of filing did the job. Fork back on, headset on, tighten,

tighten,

tighten,

SNAP!

Dohhhhh! I applied too much pressure to the headset bolt - meant more for bringing the headset together before tightening the stem - I pushed my luck and snapped it. I thought I would need a new head doctor. However, I managed to get the head doctor out of the steerer and remove the broken bit of bolt.

Would you believe that in what I consider not a particularly complete supply of spare bits and pieces I found a bolt, with the correct thread size as a replacement. Being VERY careful not to snap this one I screwed it back together.

 

Time cost of this little mishap was around ~45mins, but I was just super glad I didn't need to go an order a new head doctor.

 

Justin.