What bearing do I need?!

Hi folks,
I need a single bearing unit, ideally sealed, to form a 1" threadless headset from a bag of parts. It's nothing special but bound to be better than the one that's on my cross bike at present.

One of the cups came with a bearing tightly installed and seems to be in good condition. It mates well with the crown race and spins smoothly, so I'm happy using that as the lower cup/bearing assembly.

The other cup had the outer bearing race installed in it but the inner bearing race and all the bearings, plus seals, are all over the bag. No hope of re-assembling it so I managed to remove the bearing race without scoring the cup at all. Now, if I can just find a single sealed bearing unit to fit in there then I'll be away!

The OD of the outer race is 38mm and the ID of the inner race is 27.2mm. Height is 7mm. As I said it's for a 1" headset so an ID of 26mm or more should work. The tapered compression ring is in good shape and will close by ~1mm. I can post pics if that would help. Ideally the OD would be a little smaller to avoid struggling with a tight press-fit, and I don't think it's strictly necessary for the upper assembly.

I've tried googling to find a bearing that matches these specs but no joy so far. Can anybody give me a reference number, or point me to a resource that I could use to find out?

Cheers, Gareth.

A lot of these headset bearings are non-standard. My suggestion would be to look through the FSA Headset Book to see if there's a compatible bearing in use in a current model. TH Industries are the big Taiwanese manufacturer behind a number of these brands.

http://www.windwave.co.uk/documents/tec ... etbook.pdf

That's a 15MB pdf file.

Thanks for the follow-up. Perhaps I should have mentioned that there's no reference or code stamped anywhere on either race or on the visible seal so perhaps it is indeed a non-standard unit. In which case I think it'll be heading to landfill unless I find by chance that it'll work with loose bearings in the top.

Cheers, Gareth.

Looks like a TH 373 might do it. It's listed in the FSA book as 38mm OD, 6.5mm thick, Cane Creek compatible:

http://www.pedalator.com/VTT/inventaire ... _TH870.gif

Look familiar?

Bike Tools Etc lists one for $9

http://biketoolsetc.com/index.cgi?id=22 ... c=Bearings

Great spot there, Eagle-eyed_jim!

The headset itself bears more than a passing resemblance to an FSA Orbit but that threadless headset uses the 372 bearing which has an OD of 38.5mm and there's no way it'll fit into the cup. However, the 372 looks like it matches my specs pretty well despite being primarily used in their integrated headsets. It looks as though it's a standard Cane Creek part too so it should be easy enough to get spares.

The one aspect I'm a little concerned about is that my bearing has a rather small chamfered portion - certainly a lot smaller then the pictures in the booklet suggest. So, it might not mate so well with the compression spacer. Having said that, it might work well with the crown race - or at worst with a replacement Cane Creek or FSA crown race.

Having said all that, there are complete units on the 'Bay for less than the price of a bearing, one NOS too. I hate throwing almost-useable stuff away though!

Cheers, Gareth.