A little hard to see but on the right side where cup meets fork theres about a 1/2mm difference in space. Fork definitely needs a crown race which is seated fully. Brand new headset, minus a that little ding on the outside. Hand built titanium bike (not by me). Headset installed prior to getting to me, hence offset logo, but all other parts are in place correctly. (Bearings in correctly, compression ring/top cap fully seated, 2-3mm of space bw top of compression plug and top spacer) So the issue is when i barely preload the topcap with everything together, turning bars gets rough on one side and not the other. Could it be manufacturing defect in headtube? Something im not seeing?
by MinimumTemperature45
3 Comments
My first thought is crown race isn’t seated (I know you said it is). I’d pull the fork out and make sure the bearing cup doesn’t have anything stuck inside or something. Does the bearing sit in the cup like it should with the fork out? If it does, that brings you back to an issue with the crown race
Pull the fork out and take pictures of everything, can’t tell what’s inside when it’s like this. If it were me I would take of the top part of the headset and manually add pressure to confirm it’s the bottom half that has issues. Any rub marks on the fork crown?
A straight on photo may have helped