• do I need to worry about the loose fit on the crown race

    Yes. On a conventional headset, not having the crown race be the correct press fit on the steerer will permit radial play, which will show up as clunks in the steering and braking and accelerated wear on both headset bearings.

    The innicycle site is down for me so I can't tell what kind of bearings it uses, but if they're common angular contact cartridge bearings with chamfered seats, there are two possibilities:

    1. the "crown race"(actually the seat for the cartridge bearing inner race housing) is already split, and it's going to do what it should or
    2. the "crown race" isn't split, and you can split it to make it do what a collet should, and what a collet does for all AHeadSet upper bearings and quite a few lower ones
  • The crown race is not split, looks like the pic below and it does use standard cartridge bearings with a chamfered side.
    I don’t think splitting the race would solve the issue.
    I think I’d rather try shimming it than punching the metal of the fork crown.


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  • I don’t think splitting the race would solve the issue

    Google "split crown race". Loads of cartridge bearing headsets come with split crown races, the chamfer transfers axial load into radial compression of the "race" (collet) so the higher the axial load, the tighter the collet grips the steerer. This is also how the preload adjuster at the top solves the issue of the upper bearing collet not being a press fit on the steerer.

    The simple machine which does this is called a wedge (in this case wrapped into a cone)

    Of course, you could be right, if the difference between the diameters is so great that the bearing bottoms out on the flat face of the seat before the collet has shrunk enough to grip the steerer. You'll be able to predict this by taking appropriate measurements (will probably require a feeler gauge to check the clearance between the bearing and the flat face of the seat) and using trigonometry.

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