Hi, I'm Jan from VelomobileWorld.com, there was a question a couple of months ago already, below a video, the question was, how to make the handlebar straight. There can be a couple of reasons it's not straight anymore, one, it could be that you hit a big hole in the road or you hit a sidewalk. What happened in that case... so you have here... here you have the wheels, the right wheel, left wheel and for example you hit it with the right wheel, so it comes a huge force here on this threaded rod and because of this force this one can bend. The reason why we made it a bit weaker, is that one would be the first one to bend, because if that one doesn't bend you get maybe other things broken and this is a very cheap part to be bended, this is just a standard M6 stainless steel threaded rod, so you can replace it very easily by yourself, you can buy it by almost every metal warehouse and you cut it on the right length and replace it, so that can be a reason why your steering is not standing straight, so if you cycle and you notice that when you drive in a straight line the steering stays like this or inverse.
Another reason can be... let's turn this around... So, another reason can be here, so here you have the steering, the steering force goes through on cardan and here on pin and here is this screw, with this screw you unlock or you tight or untight the clamping force here, so it could be that this screw came a bit loose or because of again a pothole, that came too much force on and it slipped a bit, so what you do, for example at the DF, you have here the bottom and there's a hole, I will show you later on and also the SL/GT, so what you do, you untight this screw a little bit, only very little bit, so you can slip, you can move the steering a bit left and right without the wheels moving, but a little bit heavy and then you let the bike drive on a straight line, so what we did here next to the building, we have a pavement and we painted a straight line on the pavement, so search an area where you have a straight line, you cycle over it and for example you stop and you're like, okay keep the wheel and you adjust the steering a little bit to the left or to the right as needed and you drive again and then after you're ready you think, okay this is right, we have here on top, here we have two screws, so this screw doesn't need to be tight because otherwise the steering will go heavy, this screw is only to adjust the proper height, but probably you will not have problem with that one and then you will tie this again and then the problem is solved and third problem and that's a more nasty one, is the glue between this cardan thing and the steering came loose, you can check that by putting a marker here from over the tube and on the cardan, keep your wheels tight and turn left or right, if you see that that line like, are not aligned anymore, you know that there is a problem with the glue and for that one we will go in the workshop and I show you how to do it.
If you have the problem that the glue is not good anymore, you have to take this bolt out here, a bolt with... a counter bolt, there's another video how to adjust that cardan bearing I think, the rest you can unscrew from your steering and only the brake cable the inner brake cables you might need to replace, so these ones you have to replace, the rest you can take off, it's a bit of work. Now I will show you how to do the gluing part.
For this job you need a blowtorch and this heavy one (vise), I took now on a simple blowtorch, that's something you might have at home, we have of course the big one but nobody has, what we do is we heat up the gluing and something is burning here, there was some plastic, we heat up the glue until it will give in, but in your case when it was already given in, this is a more easy job, now it might be pretty difficult, yes it gives in but very very difficult, yeah now it gives in and I need to hurry up because apparently I have also no gas anymore in this blow torch because it gets smaller and smaller. Voila, let it cool down for a couple of minutes, otherwise you will pretty good burn your fingers, so take a break and then we come back to do the rest.
We took a little break and now I want to show you how to glue this back again and yeah how to put the steering back, it's just the same way only in reverse, so get a bit closer. So I start with cleaning it up a bit with acetone first, then I took a clean sandpaper 250, I mean 240 120, so I make sure it's clean, it's grinded... aluminium has an oxidation so from the moment you grind until you glue should be below 10 minutes because otherwise it makes already the oxidation skin and the gluing it's still okay but it's better between this time frame. We use from Loctite the activator 7649, I spray only here on, because if I spray it on both, I don't have time to finish it because it will glue too fast. So I put a little bit on it, I let it evaporate, I use Loctite 638, but you can use of course something else which is similar, we do here one layer of glue and in the meantime this is evaporated a bit, I put it in, I check it always before if it goes smoothly in, otherwise you have a bit problem, so I pull it out to see if there is evenly on it and then I put it in and I check if this line of this which you can go through the screws is aligned with this one. In case you feel like you have here a play, so you feel like it can play a bit like this, what you do in that case, you untied this a little bit and you tie this one until you don't feel play anymore, but it's very important that the steering need to go still very smooth, because otherwise you cannot drive in a straight line anymore and that's very annoying and afterwards, after you tighten, if after you adjust the tension here to note for... after you adjust this screw in order you don't have play anymore on this bearing, you tied this one back and problem solved.
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