How To Adjust The Headset On Your Bike | Installation, Servicing & Bearing Wear

Clock00:00, Monday 3rd September 2018

The headset of your bike is the assembly the holds the forks in place inside of your headtube. They take a massive amount of impact and abuse and do need looking at from time to time. Jon gives you his guide on adjusting your headset.

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Often headsets can work loose and so they will need tightening every so often. You often see people adjusting the headset preload bolt in order to tighten a loose headset, however, this will not work!

Firstly then let’s assume you have a loose headset, so let's loosen the preload bolt and then loosen your stem bolts, enough so that you can easily rotate the stem on the steerer. Now align the stem with your front wheel and tighten the preload bolt enough so that you meet a bit of resistance, this resistance is the headset bearing under pressure/preload, or tension if you like at either side of the headtube.

It can take a bit of toing and froing to get it spot on, but for nice smooth handling, it’s worth it. Despite all of this, if you’ve been riding for a long time with a loose headset or a tight one or maybe they are just worn out, in that case, you are best off actually replacing the bearings rather than riding along and risking poor quality handling.

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Photos: © Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images & © Bettiniphoto / http://www.bettiniphoto.net/

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