Tony, I think I may retract some of what I've said above. I always stress out about being an arm-chair mechanic and giving bad advice so, once I've said something, I keep going over it in my head and thinking about how I might have been wrong. In this case, I think the added shim is NOT where I thought it might be from looking your picture.
I just took a look at my daughter's bike which has the same headset. Here's a shot from a slightly different angle than yours, which shows the race fully inserted into the headtube. Viewed from the angle of your photo, it does give the appearance of there being a "gap," which I took to be a spacer. So, if they had to add a spacer in order to be able to tighten the locknut, what I'm now thinking is simply that the upper lip of the locknut was contacting the top of the steerer tube. This was probably happening all along but, after facing the headtube and removing material, it just got worse. So one of those regular spacers needed to be thicker. With some locknut designs (this one included), there is a pretty small margin of error in terms of necessary spacer height: too many spacers and not enough threads will be engaged; too few spacers, and the locknut will bottom out before tightening against the upper cap. Easiest way to figure out how many spacers you need is to tighten the locknut *without* spacers, measure the gap, and then add spacers that total a couple of mm MORE than that. Still.... If that headset was repeatedly coming loose on you for years, then it was likely damaged, and you really should replace it before trying anything else. If it was ovalized or distorted, that could make your steering want to "index" to a certain point, which would make it very hard to ride no-hands. Similarly: This is counter-intuitive but I've heard it mentioned enough times that I think there must be something to it: If a headset is tightened slightly TOO MUCH, it will actually make it harder to ride no-hands. You should try loosening it just a bit and experimenting. <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SRgEUUJ4af8/V8G79386e2I/AAAAAAAAAYQ/rUYk_vnXgSouNocaXOW2kn1dz9D2maH6ACLcB/s1600/tange%2Bheadset%2Bresized.jpg> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
