Campagnolo headset bearings

[abeship]

The weigle I picked up recently has a bit of an interesting feature with the headset. It feels as if there is a "home" position, almost like the headset is diveted or pitted to where the handlebars naturally align straight and it requires some force to move them right to left. The front of the bike almost feels like it is stuck while riding until you break away from the home position, then it runs like normal (until you again return to the "home" position). Is this something that I could pull the bearings out and replace them? Should I just go ahead with a new headset? It is 1" threaded steerer if it matters.

[ultraman6970]

Take the cage out and run it only with the bearings, u might need one or two more, that should help with your problem. The size of those bearings are all over the place if you use google.

A detail, maybe the headset is too tight??

[FlashUNC]

Headset is indexed. That's bad. Maybe new bearings will fix it, but I've seen them bad enough you need a new headset, bearing races are shot too.

[David Kirk]

Campy was famous for making indexed headsets.

One sure way to fix it is to do what Ultraman said in addition to pulling the cuts out of the frame and randomly reinstalling them.

Using loose bearings and rotating the cups relative to the races will make sure that the dents in the bearing surfaces will no longer be aligned and that things will spin smoothly.

dave

[Ralph]

yes.....Common problem. Take out the cages, fill cups with grease, fill up with loose balls, then take one back out. Depending on year of the headset....don't assume top and bottom same size balls. Some had larger balls on bottom.

[zmudshark]

All of the above, and you can also rotate the fixed cups 90* in the headset if you have the tools available.

I have heard anecdotal tales of people polishing the divots out of the cups with products like Simichrome. Seems like you would have to polish aggressively to smooth out the divot.

[ultraman6970]

We did something similar back in the day with a campy track hub, sanded the much we could the race in the hub, then sanded the cone and then polish the heck out of it, wheel got little tiny play but got really close to new.

We did aswell a super cheap hub, sand and polish the races and we put a set of campy cones to it, night and day.

Doesnt need to get super perfect but just enough so the pits are almost non noticeable once the grease is there.

[soulspinner]

Campy was famous for making indexed headsets.

One sure way to fix it is to do what Ultraman said in addition to pulling the cuts out of the frame and randomly reinstalling them.

Using loose bearings and rotating the cups relative to the races will make sure that the dents in the bearing surfaces will no longer be aligned and that things will spin smoothly.

dave

Glad you said this, cause I gave up Campy headsets because each of mine indexed.

[bart998]

I had a problem with this with S/R cups on old style Campy headsets with retainer bearings. I switched to a N/R bottom cup and no problem. It seems the aluminum didn't support the steel races enough to prevent denting... steel cup, no problem.

[abeship]

Would you all advise just going to a new headset? I was looking at the CK ones and they don't seem too unreasonable... Have no problem switching from campy if indexing is a common issue.

[Ralph]

With loose balls.....you will have more bearings in there than when bearings are caged. If they are same size top and bottom like in older headsets....bearings are probably 5/32....cheap for a bag. So with loose balls.....it will last a long time. New CK nice also.

[Llewellyn]

If it's cactus it sounds like it would be easier just to buy a new one. I just bought a Campy threaded headset from Wiggle for $60. That's Aussie dollars so probably about $US 45