Headset Bollocksed

Hello all, been a long time since I've been here and nice to be back.

I'm slumming in Spain at the moment and I've just bought a geared rustbucket to ride around. It was very cheap, so I was expecting problems, and having trued the wheels I have now discovered the first biggie - the headset is really, really stiff when you turn it left.

TBH, this doesn't make a lot of difference to the handling of a cheap 1000 year old bike that is too small for me anyway, but for some reason I find it annoying. According to Park Tools:

Very worn headsets tend to "lock up" when the front wheel is pointing straight. Pick up the front of the bike, and gently swing the handlebars back and forth from center. Pitting in the cups will cause the headset to stick as it passes through center position. A pitted headset should be replaced. New headsets are pressed into the frame and fork.
This is what has happened, right?

Once I've found somewhere to stay and a way of earning money, I'll do something about it. How likely is it that the bike will turn into shrapnel at a busy traffic junction in the meanwhile? Bear in mind that the roads here are pretty straight, so I don't need to do much steering, and I can't get the thing going faster than about jogging pace anyway.

Bear in mind that the roads here are pretty straight, so I don't need to do much steering,

Ha! Fucking hilarious Seeds!

Slumming in Spain... lifes tough dude. You were in Italy last I heard, eh?

Cant help with your bike issue. :)

If its an old bike i'm guessing at a quill style stem. The headset is probably dry with some damaged balls, I'd take the heast set apart clean the races up and replace the bearing with loose ball bearings if the races are heavily pitted I would put slightly larger ball bearings in to cover up the issue(minimum grade 100) and re assemble with fresh grease. Think the standard bearings size is 3/16 and if you go up to 4mm should be enough to cover any issues.

You could always take it apart and clean and re grease the whole thing...
It might not fix it but it can't make it any worse really.

Where abouts in spain are you?

I used to live in Olot, not too far from girona and barcelona. Its awesome cycling territory, the us postal team with lance amrstong were acctually based in girona when they were training for the tour de france.

Slumming in Spain... lifes tough dude. You were in Italy last I heard, eh?

Yeah, unfortunately Pistanator was right. Then I moved to Colombia, but fancied a holiday from being mugged after a month. Barcelona seems incredibly clean and safe in comparison. Though fuck knows what's wrong with the language here.

If its an old bike i'm guessing at a quill style stem. The headset is probably dry with some damaged balls, I'd take the heast set apart clean the races up and replace the bearing with loose ball bearings if the races are heavily pitted I would put slightly larger ball bearings in to cover up the issue(minimum grade 100) and re assemble with fresh grease. Think the standard bearings size is 3/16 and if you go up to 4mm should be enough to cover any issues.

Thanks! So basically, I might need bigger balls if I want to ride this bike without worrying?

well, riding a pitted headset isn't worrying, it just means it will feel bumpy.

but turning to the left and being stiff is not what a pitted headset feels like - a pitted headset will jump from pit to pit in the races rather than being a smooth turn.

you could clean and regrease the whole thing, but to me it sound like the cups are misaligned.

From my experience, the headset bearings are in metal races that slightly deform and cause that sort of sticking problem. Going to loose bearings seems to cure that problem but then I never had the notched/pitted headset problem.

But that has been my experience. Others may differ

what sheldon has to say about a pitted headset

"Indexed Steering" ("Brinelling")

All of the other ball bearings on a bike spend their lives rotating round and round, but headsets spend most of their time pointing straight ahead. Sometimes you will see that the bearing balls have created a neat row of little dents in the bearing surface of the lower frame cup and/or the crown race. This creates the effect commonly known as "indexed steering" where the balls sort of "snap" into place, and the fork tends to stick in the straight-forward position. The dents in the races resemble the dents created by the Brinell Hardness Test procedure, and as a result, this type of damage is sometimes called "Brinelling." This is a bit of a misnomer, because the Brinell hardness test involves basically hammering a bearing ball into a metal sample with one good hard whack. Some folks assume that the dents in headset races also result from impact, but actually that is not commonly the case. Instead, it has to do with lubricant breakdown. Jobst Brandt has an article on this site descrbing the process in detail.
Ideally, a "brinelled" headset should be replaced, but you can often cure the problem by replacing the retainer with loose balls. You use the same size balls, but can usually fit more of them into the races if you leave the retainer out. As a result, the greater number of balls, closer together, no longer all line up with the dimples in the races.