Hacksaw and New Frame Dilemma

[Graham O]

Well I've just ordered a new time frame, and am now starting to contemplate building it up. I am pretty confident about most of it, but a little worried about cutting down the steerer for the forks.

The forks have an alloy steerer. Does anyone know whether alloy steerers also need to be cut, and can anyone give me tips.

I have already been told to do it in two stages. Any other advice ?

[Elliot M]

The only thing you need to be careful with is getting the length right as if you do it too short it's new fork time. I think most headset manufacturers recommend the steerer be cut to 3-4mm shorter than your stem and spacer stack to allow the headset slack to be taken up. So you build it all up and mark very carefully where you need to cut.

Best thing to use is a pipe cutter.

But what I do is just take it all apart and clamp just the stem back on as a cutting guide to make sure the cut is square, using a sacrificial 1mm stem spacer between stem and saw blade, and cut through with a junior hacksaw. You will get neater results if you do half from each side. Then use a file to level off against the stem spacer. In fact last time I just cut it in place on the bike, and that was with a 400 quid mountain bike fork.

[Matthew Ives]

What I do is fit the headset , spacers (however many you use) and then the stem. You will have a big section of steerer tube coming out the top, but don't worry about that for now.

As Elliot said, you will need to cut the steerer tube 3-4mm shorter than the point at which the steerer tube leaves the top of the stem. This is so that the headset cap can push down on the stem as you tighten the bolt into the star fangled nut , before you do up the stem bolts.

Again,as Elliot said, if you cut the whole thing too short, it's either a new set of forks or you'll be forced to ride with one less spacer than you're used to.

[Grahame]

[quote] Any other advice ?

[Graham O]

Thanks Guys....

Guess that the pipe cutter is the way to go. I guess that you mean something like this..

http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro ... 6&ts=16885

[Grahame]

That's the jobbie, yes.