I am building up a turner rfx in XL at the moment and am hunting a fox 36 with a long steerer. Most seem to have been cut to max 200mm. The head tube is about 160mm, so with a stem and headset that'll leave no room for spacers at all. Is this normal for a 160 fork / XL set up? Don't want to have buy a full price fork as working on a budget.

Also I seem to be messing about with bikes a lot and could do with changing headsets. It there a tool that removes them other than the £180 park? Seems a bit pricey.

Cheers
rich

Fairly normal when you consider the average bike is a medium with a headtube of around 120mm. Headset presses needn't cost that much, certainly for occasional use (though they are nice to use), companies like Cyclus/Cyclo sell them much cheaper than that, or in time honoured STW fashion, you could make your own by visiting your local metal stockist for a length of studding, 2 nuts and thick washers that'll seat nicely in your headset cups(my studding's about 20mm, with 36mm o.d.washers)

Shame they dont sell a fork with a threaded steerer
so you can buy an new steerer as opposed to hunt
for the correct length

Thanks Coatsey, I was thinking from the perspective of 140mm bikes. Would homemade press remove headsets as well?

steerer spacers have no actual functionality apart from using up space 🙂

Shame they dont sell a fork with a threaded steerer

…if there's one part on a bike that I would never wish to loosen or detach, it's the steerer!

headset remover – £12.17 to you, sir

works fine.

A stem that fits OK with or without extra rise, then consider some higher riser bars? Or you may find with that fork length you don't need higher bars + no spacers is OK and your current stem and bars OK.

I'd start by measuring the height of your hands with your current setup and aim to match that. If it looks like it will be lower then you could lower your bars on the current setup to see if it feels OK.

get a low stack hs?

I have a set of mint condition (they don't even have cable rub marks, 2007 Fox 36 Talas RC2's with a 220mm+ steerer that I am willing to part with.

Fire me an e-mail if your interested and i'll send you some pics.

I just use a screwdriver and a hammer to pop the headset out, takes two seconds.

Thanks fellas. Dirtynap ygm.