OT ish: Star nuts / Star fangled nuts / similar fixings

What about Sandy Nuts? Come in sizes 6'1, 34" waist.

With the greatest possible respect Sir, WTF are you talking about ?

Surely not torx fasteners ?

Not torx fasteners. They're commonly used to tension the bearings in a bicycle headset. It's basically a nut attached to a star shaped piece of steel, which you knock into a tube. It grabs the tube the more you tighten it. Looks like this:

But they're also around with just one star...

See if B&Q do anything as a captive nut. Otherwise the standard bike sizes were 1" (Rare legacy pre-ahead size to keep the oldskool guys happy) 1.125" Standard Ahead Dia-Compe original size, and 1.25" Tioga again, legacy from the threaded headset days when different companies where experimenting on optimal tube diameters, and wall thicknesses and maximum number of bearings to improve the strength of the bike and longevity of the bearings.

From a bit under an inch (road bikes) to a bit under 1.5 inches for bikes I know of anyway. rec.bicycles-tech would probably be a good place to check further.

1.25" is still used by Santana (they make tandems), and you forgot One Point Five. (does that use star nuts?)

cheers, clive

I didn't know anyone actually made them that big. 1/1.125/1.25 where the three biggies. I know some downhill bikes did weird stuff like split chains and bottom brackets containing 3 speed hubs instead of chainring clusters, so it wouldn't surprise me.

Bugger. I need about 16.4mm or so IIRC. Maybe I could machine down some quills or something. Or araldite a threaded bit of metal in.