[Lucifer]

So I recently purchased an '07 Iron Horse Yakuza Sohon Bucho (for the low price of $300). I noticed that it was hard to steer and would make a little noise while doing so before I bought the bike, but I kind of assumed that it just needed some bearings repacked.

Well after getting it home and doing some maintenance, it became very obvious that the previous owner had never done a bit of maintenance through out the entirety of his ownership of the bike. The frame had been wore into on the top where the head set sits. It's only a slight wear but it's there none the less. The star shaped thing that envelops the bolt hole that you screw your headset cap into is also tore slightly, but it seems secure enough and I can still get my cap to sit nice and tight regardless of the tearing. The problem is that I can't get the head set to tighten all the way as there is always play in between the fork/headset and the frame.

What exactly is to blame? And is it possible to order these parts individually? I'm really hoping that the wear in the frame isn't causing this. I've never really done anything with this part of a bike besides a simple repacking of the bearings, so I'm fairly ignorant, hence my terrible terminology. Any help is greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!

 

[Scrub]

Without any pics it may sound like you need a steerer(sp) tube spacer placed below your stem or cut down the steerer tube so that you can get the correct preload on the headset bearings. Is the top cap on your stem flush with the fork steerer tube?

 

[Lucifer]

Without any pics it may sound like you need a steerer(sp) tube spacer placed below your stem or cut down the steerer tube so that you can get the correct preload on the headset bearings. Is the top cap on your stem flush with the fork steerer tube?

No the steerer tube pokes out of the top of the stem. The way it was set up before was with a spacer in between the cap and the stem. It also has two spacers below the stem. I just assumed that it was assembled right in the first place and put it back together the way it was before. Maybe a wrong assembly is to blame for the tearing?

Now that I think about it that makes perfect sense. I have never messed with dual crown forks but over tightening the cap bolt with a spacer inbetween the stem and the cap would probably be what caused the tearing of the star shaped thing inside the steerer tube? And can you tell me the name of the star shaped thing that I'm talking about?

 

[OGRipper]

And can you tell me the name of the star shaped thing that I'm talking about?

Believe it or not it's called a star-fangled nut. It gets installed after the fork steerer tube is cut to the proper length.

Like Scrub said, you need to make sure you have the correct amount of spacers. If you don't have enough, the headset top cap will bottom out on the top of the steerer tube - and if you keep trying to tighten it, you can mangle the star nut.

If you want to lower the stem, you can run some or all of your spacers on top of the stem (between the stem and the headset top cap). Once everything is assembled, the stem (or spacer on top of the stem) should be a little bit ABOVE the top of fork steerer tube (like 2mm or so). That will give you a little room to tighten the headset and ensure your stem is clamping properly.

It's really hard to know what's going on from your description, but when you talk about your frame being worn down it sounds like the frame might be damaged - perhaps from the prior owner riding around with the headset too loose. If you do that you can ovalize the head tube and that is basically the end of the story.

You should probably get it over to a shop or at least to a friend who knows what they're doing.