Newbie mistake: bought a tapered fork. Is there hope?

[352pro]

Hello community,

I am a newbie to cycling and accidentally bought a tapered fork for my Lemond Tourmalet. My Lemond has a straight steerer that is 1 1/8. The fork I just bought is 1 3/8 on the bottom and 1 1/8 on the top. Is there any hope for salvaging my new fork, or do I need to sell it? Thank you for your help!

 

[dabac]

I think you're out of luck. You can get adaptor headsets to install straight forks in tapered headtubes, but not the other way around. But 1 3/8? Not heard about that size before. Are you sure you're not measuring on either the little swelling to seat the bearing race, or at an old bearing race left in place? Sometimes it's possible to kludge things together by mixing integrated headset parts with external headset parts. Haven't seen external headsets in tapered though.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

S.O.L.

The fork will not work in a straight 1-1/8" head tube.