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That’s great, thank you. Good tip turning the cups.
I can’t remember exactly what the machine shop needs but pretty sure it’s an annular something or other. Not a huge surprise! Didn’t seem like many places have one when I was looking.
As far as I know lightly refacing would be fine, I think the metal under the bearing surface is softer though isn’t it? That was the question with mine - could it just be re-faced or would it need hard chroming as well. Starts to get a bit pricey!
Please put my name down for one of your tools!
veloham-
As far as I know lightly refacing would be fine, I think the metal under the bearing surface is softer though isn’t it?
Depends on the headset. The frames I’ve had with integrated headset cups and drop-in races (e.g. roadsters, anything with a headclip), the races have been machined from high carbon steel. They’ll be the same hardness all the way through. Pressed in cups, I guess, were case hardened? They’ll be softer underneath.
I would intend to literally only dress the surface. I’m pretty sure you could make the headset 80% better with 20% work; at the least make an unusable headset usable again, but not perfect.
Jonny69
It really depends what you can put up with. If you’re used to this so called Chris King level of headset smoothness then you’ll notice just a little bit of notchiness. Personally, I don’t mind a slightly rough headset, but I don’t like a tight feeling headset which won’t centre nicely; and I also don’t like a headset which has worn itself badly in the middle position. That’s your headset indexing. At that point, it can feel like it’s springing itself into the straight ahead position and it can make the bike feel alarmingly unstable at low speed.
There’s a quick bodge/dodge/fix though. The divots are worst in the straight ahead position and directly above one another where the balls sit. If you pop the cups out and turn them round a bit, you’ll move the divots out of the straight ahead position and it’ll stop trying to spring into the centre position. They also then don’t line up and some of the notchiness is reduced.
I keep meaning to come up with some kind of a tool for lightly re-facing headset races. I’m sure it would work like lapping in valves on an engine, with a couple of grades of grinding paste.