Explain headsets please

That's a neat pic Danson67 worth a thousand words as the saying goes.

What have you used so far to persuade the lower race to part company with the frame? usually a pipe inside the head tube resting against the top of the race and whacked is pretty effective. screwdrivers have a plastic handle which absorb the shock. We also used to have a variety of metal bars we called "drifts" to do the same job as the pipe

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=256463

Tange Levin on the above according to the poster.

Shaun

PS Torqueless, you are right..the stack height too big scenario. if the headset was steel I'd simply use a spacer and a few threads, howver the headset is alloy and pretty soft at that and bottled out the spacer.

Midlife":1pn3djpw said:

What have you used so far to persuade the lower race to part company with the frame?

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Profanity and lots of it!

It's off down the LBS - I haven't got the tools to do it so i'll give it to a man who has. He can take the cranks off as well - sprocket is too fat to fit in-between bolt and crank :roll: works fine on all my other bikes?

However, I am going to get a headset tool as i've got four I need to install so may as well invest in one.

Hopefully if all goes to plan I'll have a headset ordered by weekend - may need a 2mm spacer which i've got on the existing headset - also found a saddle, so it's a seatpost and pedals and frame paint / decals and I can get cracking with the build.

Also - was it usual to put a piece of tin can inside the compression rings in a headset BITD? Only just got rid of the plaster of my finger - rusty & still bloody sharp and cut out by a baffoon - not even straight lines, just a jagged circle of 40 year old metal?!?!?

Yes as Midlife says, for most of us it's a hammer and drift job, but try to keep the cup parallel with the tube, as it (hopefully) emerges..

There seem to have been a few different Levins over the years, with different stack-heights. The one you linked to could be 80s? Same style as Stronglight A9 I guess- sort of streamlined. The Levin I was thinking of is actually a dead ringer for Campag. Super Record Strada but with slightly less stack.

I confess Finney I am no longer sure what you are measuring :? but at the risk of stating the obvious- You have a steerer tube of a certain measurable length, and a headtube of a certain measurable length, regardless of any headset bits attempting to thwart your measuring. The difference in length between them is your stack-height. If some of that difference is not at one end of your head-tube, you can bet your life you will find it at the other end!

Also - was it usual to put a piece of tin can inside the compression rings in a headset BITD?

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Don't worry unless it was/is being used as a shim to restore 'interference fit' between bottom cup/headtube and/or top race/headtube. If it was/is, then something is badly worn, hopefully the headset, and not the head-tube.

I can understand how your not confident in what i'm measuring (3 pages to make me understand stack heights :facepalm: ) but i'm pretty confident in what i'm doing now!

The piece of tin can was inside the lower compression ring which is to big for the steerer all the way down so there's no issues on the steerer or the headtube - it's the cheap and nasty headset. Poor, poor quality.