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I try to insert back the fork in my bicycle. When I was removing it, after unscrewing everything the fork didn't come off by itself, I had to pry and remove aluminium ring which was the last element holding fork in place. Ok, so far so good, I am putting everything back now and the question is how to insert this ring tightly so it would hold fork in place exactly like before?

enter image description here

This is GCN video which has pretty much the same elements: How To Change Your Road Bike Headset and Forks however note they slid down this ring (silver one, exactly as I set the time at) without inserting it tightly so there is space visible and the fork would fall off if not held from the bottom.

Prying it off was quite easy, because I could do this in one point (gap in the ring) but now, when inserting when I try to push it down in one place the opposite side goes up.

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  • It's difficult to tell which exact part the "fork ring" is. Could you check for example parktool.com/blog/repair-help/… for the name of the part?
    – ojs
    Mar 24, 2018 at 10:25
  • @ojs, I don't see it there, but for clarity I made also a screenshot from the video. Mar 24, 2018 at 10:35

2 Answers 2

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You don't need to tighten that component - it is not supposed to hold the fork in place. The fork is held in place by the stem, preloaded by the stem cap.

When you took the headset apart that ring was simply stuck. I would not have levered it out as that might damage it. I would have gently knocked the steerer down using a rubber hammer.

Support the fork while replacing all the components on top of the head tube. You can just push all the rings, spacers and stem down by hand so there is not a huge amount of play in the head bearings after you install the stem.

All the components will be pushed into place when you preload the bearing by tightening the stem cap before finally clamping the stem in place.

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The part is called centering sleeve. The easiest way to install it is leaving it to the place where it is shown on the screen shot, then pushing it down with a headset spacer as far as it will go and finally installing the dust cap and pushing with it.

It is not supposed support any load, even if it accidentally did with the old fork. Instead, the bearings are adjusted with the headset cap and held in place by clamping the stem around steerer tube.

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