Alpha Q Repair

We see quite a few different failure modes every week and every so often we get enough time to sit down and explain why. Recently a local cyclist in Portland brought in his favorite rain bike for some custom painted carbon fiber fenders and to re-insert the metal insert on his Alpha Q fork.

When Alpha Q was producing forks they included a metal sleeve that was inserted into the steer tube after it was cut. This system provides extra reinforcement from clamping and the ability to use a standard star nut. The downside was that the sleeves had to be installed by the end user with the included epoxy.

When we removed the metal insert all the epoxy that was used came out with metal sleeve and there wasn’t any remaining on the inside of the steer tube. This lead us to believe that when the original sleeve was inserted, the steer tube wasn’t properly prepared and there was residual wax and/or grease preventing the epoxy to fully bond to the steer tube.

While not truly catastrophic it is quite annoying because you can never get to the preload requirements of most headsets without the metal insert pulling out.

If you find yourself with a the same problem we can fix it for you, contact us at [email protected] and we’ll take it from there!