Rounding off carbon caps

[rliu]

Hi I seem to have run into this issue with 2 cheap after-market carbon caps recently, where from trying to tighten the headset and doing up the top cap bolt hard, the bolt seems to have dug into the cap and rounded off the cap (the bolt is now sitting much further down hole). Has anyone come across this issue before and have any advice to tighten headsets without doing this, or should I just avoid cheap caps/expander bung sets from ebay and buy more well known brands like BBB or Deda?

 

[Cycleops]

That should sort your problem.

 

[S-Express]

Hi I seem to have run into this issue with 2 cheap after-market carbon caps recently, where from trying to tighten the headset and doing up the top cap bolt hard, the bolt seems to have dug into the cap and rounded off the cap (the bolt is now sitting much further down hole). Has anyone come across this issue before and have any advice to tighten headsets without doing this, or should I just avoid cheap caps/expander bung sets from ebay and buy more well known brands like BBB or Deda?

Sounds like you don't understand the purpose of the top cap bolt. Its only function is to preload the headset bearings and remove play, before tightening the stem/steerer clamp bolts. It only needs to be nipped up to remove play - nothing more.

 

[Ian H]

Yup. Once everything else is tightened, its only function is to stop the sweat dripping off the end of your nose going into the steerer-tube.