Crown race replacement?

[portlandgrey2]

After some advice gents, i'm midway through rebuilding my old Klein Pinnacle & have removed the forks to service the bearings.

The top section of the headset is fine, bit the lower cup & crown race are pitted. The headset is a kona impact 1" so i need to retain the overall stack height of 35mm.

As most of the stack height appears to come from the upper cup & nuts etc, can i just replace the lower cup & race with an alternative brand - i'm thinking something with a cartridge bearing?

 

[scant]

i've mixed brands of upper & lower cups before. aside from setting some peoples OCD off, functionally it'll work fine.

 

[ishaw]

As above. I have done it on modern frames, nuke proof lower, hope upper, but I have OCD so soon swapped the lower cup for a hope. Works fine of course. If you are going to buy a headset though, if the stack height works, I'd swap the upper too. Did I mention I have OCD about such things.

 

[hamster]

Something like a Tange Levin headset should do the job fine and not break the bank.

 

[portlandgrey2]

Thanks for the suggestions chaps. I've gone for a cane creek threadless headset, i'll use the bottom section for now.

 

[M_Chavez]

It's OK to mix & match top & bottom, but don't match parts within the same cup. Even sealed cartridge ones are not guaranteed to fit as I found out.