Hi,

I am fitting a quill stem adaptor to the other half’s old (2007) hybrid, so I can use a headless threadset and regular stem and bars. It had a quill stem originally.

The generic brand quill stem adaptor is in two parts – the main adaptor and a wedge on the bottom, joined by a long nut.

The fork of her bike has an angled top to it, so I am presuming that the idea is the adaptor would be bolted directly to it without a wedge in place? I can’t find any great advice on the interweb – I am not sure if the adaptors are designed to be used in this way.

Pictures always help.

Will try and get some together later this week. Bike (and quill stem adaptor) currently at in laws.

Apologies if you know all this already, but the wedge is what holds a quill stem in place. The whole lot slides inside the fork steerer, then as you tighten the bolt it pulls the wedge up against the “main adaptor” to wedge it in place inside the steerer.

The top of the steerer shouldn’t be angled. In fact I can’t see how it can be as it has threads cut into it to hold the headset in place.

I suggest friendly local bike shop on this one but if you must quill stems work by the top bit tighting against the bottom bit and expanding to fix itself inside the steerer tube by interference fit. I cannot imagine anyone has sawn the steerer tube at an angle so u assume you mean the wedge from the quill stem is still rusted inside steerer? If so you want that out and put the full new steerer adaptor in

Park tools website will tell you better than I have just done and with pictures.

Roverpig – many thanks. Never one to miss an opportunity to embarrass myself, I think that may be the issue, I suspected it is still rusted in place.

Will get the WD40 and a mallet out and see where I go from there.

You may find the adapter is designed around a steel steerer, it won’t fit in an aluminium steerer due to the smaller I/D thicker walls.

Worked in a couple of LBS’s and not seen an angled fork steerer (top?) before,do you mean the rear of the stem is angled?,as this is often the case with quill stems. Always had a lot of sucess with Aheadstem adaptors, we’d often have customers wanting scary-high handlebars so we would use an adaptor to get some lift. Useful too if you swap out forks and steerer is too short for new frame headtube. Keep ’em nice and tight and Bob’s your father’s brother. 🙂

I am fitting a quill stem adaptor to the other half’s old (2007) hybrid, so I can use a headless threadset and regular stem and bars.

Just incase its not been mentioned. Adding a stem adaptor will not change what headset is required, you will still need a threaded headset, just means you can use a a-head stem.

Also…

At that age is it a 1 1/8ths or 1inch fork?

Eddie – your were spot on, it was simply the old bottom plug left in the tube. It had got stuck.

I did not make clear to all, but I had the lbs change the headset out. It is 1 1/8th, and the whole purpose was to get the bike going again but also allow me to put more modern bars and stem on, which are now fitted.

Just got crankset, brakes and gears to sort out now.