Issues with Hope Head Doctor

I bought a frame and rather than a star nut, it had a Hope Head Doctor (took me a while to work out what it was).

I can’t seem to get it to work though. When I tighten down the top cap it keeps spinning before ever getting tight. It’s basically dragging the Head Doctor out of the steerer. I tried to tighten the head doctor some more but then the whole thing started spinning instead of tightening.

Has anyone had any luck with one of these before? Seems to be totally an over engineered replacement for a simple task!

The inside of my steerer does feel a bit sticky/greasy. Is this maybe just stopping it from getting any purchase?

Should I just give up and get a star nut installed?

Does it need expanding until it catches the inside of the steerer. Then when you push it in and tighten it up it'll expand?

Seems to be totally an over engineered replacement for a simple task!

Thats Hope in a nutshell.

it tightened as far as it can go. I had to extract it out of the steerer with a bolt like a makeshift crank puller.

It was as tight as it could go in the steerer. I couldn’t tighten it more without it spinning and I couldn’t loosen it as it would just spin the other way.

Now that I’ve extracted it I can’t loosen it to try again because of the weird way it’s designed!

Seems so! The bikes in the shop soon so I think I’ll just get them to install a standard star nut

Well isn't a head doctor just hopes compression bung for carbon steerers? It's definitely over-engineering - if you could call it that, maybe just the wrong part - to use it in a steel fork. I can't remember exactly but can you remove the top cap part? Then there may be a hex head to tighten the compression bung and then you screw the top cap part in after that.

It may just be too small for a steel steerer as the ID of carbon steerers is different to steel. I am assuming you are using it on a metal steerer, given the suggestion of fitting a star nut

Where have you seen they’re for carbon steerers only? I’ve just read things saying it’s designed for 1/8 steerers.

If they are for carbon only the previous own clearly wasn’t aware of it.

But no stress I’ll just get a star nut out in.

If anyone wants the Head Doctor drop my a PM

I've got head doctors in two steel steerers, though I don't recall them being a problem to fit. Just had to make sure they were quite snug when installed and then they tightened up fine

Perhaps whoever fitted it overdid it with the grease

It may just be too small for a steel steerer as the ID of carbon steerers is different to steel.

Reckon it'll be this as I have a Columbus bung that bottoms out on itself before tightening into a steel steerer.

Sounds like it may be possible!

Maybe we’re all wrong

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Well there you go. Maybe there is a standard aluminium steerer ID. I can't think what other reason that it would only be for alu. I have had issues with carbon bungs being too small/big for certain carbon forks so there certainly is no standard for carbon steerers ID.

The Head Doctor is pretty short so maybe they are worried about it exerting it’s force over too small an area.

Have you put a small screwdriver in the outer slot of the Head Doctor and then tightened the allen bolt? The screwdriver stops everything spinning when it's getting tightened down. I had a very similar issue and this seemed to resolve it.

After having to pull it out manually I could see it isn’t able to tighten down any further. So unfortunately I don’t think it’s compatible with this steerer