- As you can probably see next to me
is Neil's cross country bike at the moment.
Missing a fork,
that's because we're about to fit
a nice shiny new fork to it.
In doing so, I want to point out a fact
that there are a lot of classic mistakes
that people make when fitting forks.
You definitely do not want to make any of those
because they're really expensive.
So here are 10 mistakes that people make
when fitting a pair of suspension forks to a bike
and more importantly, what you can do to avoid them.
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Number one is cutting the steerer tube to the wrong length.
So if you look at Neil's old fork here,
you can see the length of the steerer tube
and you offer up the new one,
you can see it's significantly longer.
That's because I do need to trim that down
to the correct length.
Now I don't need to tell anyone this,
you need to measure this twice and cut once.
You never want to mess this up,
it's a very expensive mistake.
Now I could quite easily just measure this
against the existing steerer,
but really to safeguard yourself,
what you want to be doing is offering up inside the bike,
fit the stem, fit the spaces, make a marking,
to where you want to make that cut,
and then check it, and then make the cut.
Definitely don't chance it by just offering it up
against what you already have.
It's very easy to make a mistake.
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- Not leaving enough space for your stem spacers.
Now this is another classic mistake,
that you'll cut the steerer tube down,
it'll fit on the bike, nice and flush,
but you have zero adjustment.
Also, something a little safety point,
is that there should be a 3 millimeter gap
between the top of the steerer tube and the inside
of the top of the stem, and the reason for that is
when you're compressing it all to preload those bearings,
it obviously needs to move fractionally,
so it does have to have a little
bit of margin of error there.
Some stem manufacturers and some fork manufacturers
are now actually suggesting that you leave enough space
and you run a spacer on the top and you have that
margin of error on the spacer itself so thereby
the stem gets a full interface on the steerer tube.
Worth taking into account and what I always recommend doing
is leave that little bit extra because you can
fine-tune your ride.
Now Neil actually has had
two spacers on his bike previously.
I'm going to actually cut it down
so it only has the single spacer
and he wants it on the top
so he can get that nice connection.
The stem's got quite a low stack height
which means if you have that 3 millimeter gap
underneath the top of the stem,
you're not having a whole of stem grip
from the steerer tube, so for safety element
having that on the top gives you that little bit of
margin of error and you can tweak around your
ride height slightly as well.
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- Not having a nice sharp blade on your hacksaw,
this is really important to get a good, clean cut.
A lot of people I've seen using old hacksaw blades
just literally hacking at steerer tubes on forks
and not cutting down properly,
that's not what you want to be doing.
And also you need to take into account how you actually
use the hacksaw. You don't want to be pulling out,
you don't want to be pushing and pulling.
Basically, you want to be doing the
cutting in one direction, unweighting it,
and pulling it back.
So nice smooth action to get a nice smooth cut.
There is also another option available to you
if you're not going to use a hacksaw,
and that is a pipe cutter.
Now pipe cutters are good to use
if you use a high quality ones designed
for using on hard anodized steerer tubes, like this one.
What you don't want to be using is
a generic household one that are actually used
for softer pipes, like copper piping for example,
in central heating.
If you wind one of those up,
you start cutting your steerer tube with one of those,
you can actually flare the ends of the tube very slightly,
enough that it's going to make put in the steerer tube
through your headset a real pain and also
getting your steerer tube spacers over there
and your stem on the end can be a real tight fit.
So, if you're going to use a pipe cutter,
only use a high quality one
that's designed for using on harder metals.
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- Next up is not cutting your steerer tube level,
or having a cut that's kind of on the piss a bit.
You do not want to do this, this is not good practice,
it looks horrible.
And in an ideal world,
you want to be using something like this,
which is basically a saw guide,
specifically designed for doing this one job.
You place this part in the vice, the fork goes through here,
you clamp it in place,
and you've got a nice accurate guide there
to cut your fork steerer tube in the correct place.
However that is quite a specialist tool
and if you're not going to be doing this
more than a couple of times,
it can be hard to justify the cost,
so I have a cool little hack that you can use
to get a similar effect.
Here's, get yourself an old stem,
someone, one of your friends is likely to have one,
put a stem on the steerer tube,
you can use this as a guide, basically cut up against the stem.
Obviously don't use the one you intend on using again
because you can scratch and scuff them,
and in general you treat them pretty badly,
but this old thing is ideal for doing just that.
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- However you decide to cut your steerer tube,
once you have, you're going to need to file
the ends of that cut, and the reason for that is
it's going to leave a sharp burr around the edge.
So A you can cut your hands on that
and B it makes it really hard
for installing the fork correctly into a headset.
And through headset space sets the stem and
all of that sort of stuff.
Now firstly, you want to have a nice sharp metal file,
so you want to do a nice smooth action
and give it a slightly rounded edge,
and don't forget to do the outside and the inside.
Take care when you're checking it
in case there are any burrs,
because it's very easy to just put fine slicing
into your finger,
and make sure it's nice and smooth all over.
Now the real important thing here,
and the thing that people classically do wrong,
is let those metal filings go all over the fork,
in particular anywhere near the fork seals.
Now they can be a real pain to get off
because of the amount of oil and residue around these,
and sometimes you won't even notice
that you've got metal filings around your seals
until it's too late.
Think how a fork works, it's a telescopic action,
and it's naturally going to ingest mud, muck,
and you guessed it metal filings if they're in there.
Metal filings will do much damage
to the inside of your forks,
in particular to those expensive bushings
that help them slide up and down,
and basically they're just not very good for your bike.
So, pay attention when you're filing,
don't let the metal filings get anywhere near stuff.
If you're paranoid about it, you could input
plastic bag over your fork when you're making that cut,
just to make sure there's no contamination.
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- Next up is not installing your star fangled nut correctly.
This is a classic, it happens all the time,
I could even name some people in this building,
that work on GMBN that do this wrong quite constantly.
I'm not looking at you Blake but maybe I am.
So the star nut, there's a few different ways
you can do this wrong.
The first one, is by not having the correct
installation tool and of course an installation tool
for putting these in a bike is an expensive and a
very specific tool for the job.
It is the best tool
and really is the only way to do it properly,
but you can do it in other ways.
One example is literally using the bolt
that you use with the star nut and
hammering it into the bike.
Be careful if you do this. It's really easy firstly,
to get it wrong and put it in at an angle,
once it starts going at an angle,
it's very hard to get right,
and you're never going to get a decent preload
on your headset if you do it like this.
The next one is hammering it in too deep.
You're never going to be able to reach the thing
and the only way of getting a star nut out
is by continuing to push it all the way out the
steerer tube and then at the end of the day
it's going to be broken and not good for anything then.
So, that's two classics, straightaway.
Another one is when you're hammering it in,
they can actually separate.
So star nuts are made of three pieces,
the two star fangled plates and
obviously the threaded section that holds it together.
You can actually shock these apart inside the steerer tube
and you're never going to be able to get any preload.
You're just going to be stuck with something
rattling around on the inside.
So try and avoid that at all cost.
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- Not using grease. We've said this many times with bikes,
there's lots of moving parts and components that do need
lubrication, the chances are that you've probably never
put any grease in your headset.
Why would you? It's kind of a fit and forget thing
because the fact is hidden away on the bike,
it's not like something mechanical you can see,
like your transmission.
So, when you have a fork out of the bike,
it's a really good idea to take the bearings out,
inspect them, make sure they still feel okay,
give them a wipe down, make sure they're fairly clean,
the same with the cups on the inside of the frame,
and put a load of fresh grease in there.
The amount of people I know that don't have any grease
on their bikes and insist on still riding them,
you're just going to kill those bearings really quickly.
Use loads of grease and it makes everything better.
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- And the last one on the list is
not lining up your handlebars and stem correctly.
We've all done it and we've all sat on a friends bike
and realized that the handlebars are kind of off skew.
It's quite hard to get them very accurately set up
but there's a few little tips and tricks you can do
to make it a little bit easier, because it can be,
you know using your eye to get it right, quite difficult.
Now the first one is most people try to line up
the stem with the front tire, this used to be quite easy
when you had nice long stems, horrible long stems in fact,
but these days we have really short stems,
it's very hard to actually get that right.
So a much better tip is actually to line up your handlebars
with your fork clamps because you can look directly down
at the handlebar relationship, it is much closer to them.
But one last tip you can do,
this is taking things to extremes though,
would be to remove the controls off your bar,
so take off the grips or perhaps you can just move
your brake levers out of the way,
lean the fork legs up against the wall,
and handlebars up against the wall,
and you can actually use that flat wall,
assuming the wall is completely flat,
to make sure your bars and your forks are in line.
Clamp it all down and then when you put your wheel back in
you'll find it is dead, arrow straight.
Don't be one of those people who rides with a wonky stem.
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- Messing up your cable routing.
Now there's plenty of things that can go wrong here.
Obviously, you want a nice clean route for the front brake
to get down to the fork.
Now firstly, what you want to make sure you do,
is not having the cable running up,
or the hose running up the outside of the fork leg.
First reason for that is it's quite likely to rub
on your fork and rub that paint away.
The second reason for that is it's very easy
to be snagged, to roll to feel the undergrowth,
and if you have a crash you can actually damage that
front brake hose very easily.
You want to be routing from the inside
of the fork here, on the inside of the leg,
and up through the archway here,
with the supplied cable mount.
Now this is the culprit of loads of classic mistakes.
People mess these bolts up and strip these threads
all the time, it's a very delicate bolt,
it's only retaining just to hold that cable in place.
You're not really clamping it down with any sort of force.
So make sure you don't go crazy on the anarchy.
Don't be hanging that off and actually damaging it.
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- Not using a shock pump to set up the correct
air pressure in your fork. I know what the temptation is,
I know some people who do this quite often,
using a track pump to inflate your fork is not a good idea.
So forks run at fairly low pressure, talking up to 100 PSI,
it's not much and it's something very achievable
by a track pump, but you definitely do not want to be using
a track pump with any sort of adapter on your fork.
The reason for that is it forces a lot of air in
very, very fast. It's very easy to damage your seals.
Very easy to damage the valve on the top of the fork.
Only ever use a proper shock pump.
That is what it's designed for, for shocks and forks,
and they're nice and accurate,
and you're not going to damage your
expensive suspension fork.
Well there we go there's ten classic mistakes
people make when they're installing suspension forks
to their bikes. Don't be someone who makes one
of those ten mistakes. Do it properly.
Do it right. And you can enjoy having a suspension fork
on your bike. For another mistakes video,
click down here for traveling mistakes for your bike.
All sorts of stuff that you do like leaving your
front wheel at home and knocking those brake pads together
when you accidentally use the lever in the back of the car
when you've not got a front wheel in there.
And click down here if you want to learn
how to set up your suspension in ten minutes.
Really easy how to video, anyone can do this,
and you can do it anywhere. As always,
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