Fork reattaching daftiness

Trying to reattach forks on my 2011 lapierre zesty 314. Have 4 spacers and a silver top spacer (?). Can get 3 of the 4 spacers back on but no room for 4th. And when I tighten top bolt the forks are too stiff to turn.please tel me what I am doing wrong. Forks are fox float.

You need the same amount of spacers back in again. When the stem is slid back down the fork steerer it needs a minimum of 3mm from the top edge of the stem proud of the top of the steerer. That gives you the room to tighten it all down and not clamp it up too tight . Which is what you areally doing when not using the fourth spacer.

You may not have seated the bearings back in the cups and pushed everything together properly if you can’t fit the same number of spacers back on. Make sure everything is lined up and there is not a large gap between the fork crown and the lower bearing cup/head tube.

Thanks guys will give another go.

And don’t over tighten the top cap bolt, it’s only there to remove play from the bearings.

…and the bearings are the right way up, top and bottom

Is the silver spacer split? If it is then it sounds like you haven’t put the compression ring in the headset, it goes under the top bearing cover between that and the top bearing, without it the headset won’t tighten properly, either too loose or too tight.

yeah sounds like you messed up with the split ring.

Order from the top:

Top cap & screw
Spacer (maybe)
Stem
Spacer
Top cover of headset
Silver split ring (flat top up, pointy end down)
Bearing with inner chamfer pointing up (engages with split ring) and outer chamfer down
Top cup (if present)
Frame
Bottom cup (if present)
Crown race
Fork

Sounds like by having the split ring missing you are clamping the top cover down onto the bearing/top cup/frame. Your fork must wobble around a bit until it’s really tight too!

Sounds distinctly like I’ve messed the silver spacer up. It is split. Will rearrange as advised and report back. Cheers dudes.

Is it upside down?

Is the bike the correct way uP

It worked. Thanks all. Split split silver silver spacers are go.