A fit & forget headset?

Prowler

As a low price option the FSA pig has given me good value for money. The only real downside for me so far is the time spent cleaning and re-greasing it to make it through the wet season. So I'm looking for a headset that requires the minimum amount of maintenance. Are headsets with sealed cartridge bearings any better in this respect? If so, what would you recommend as a mid-price (< £ 50) option?

ratty2k

Chris King make the only "fit and Forget" headsets IMO (mines been in 3 different bikes) but the Hope headsets are prettty decent and around the £50 mark. Either that or get cheap ones and either change the bearings more often or grease them more often if they are lose bearings.

Prowler

Thanks for you comment ratty. Can you be more specific about the difference between a CK and, for example the Hope unit? What does one get for the extra money spent on the CK?

ratty2k

CK is regarded as the Daddy of headsets with better seals etc , but there's nowt wrong with Hope or FSA or any of the other major manufacturers TBH. I only got my CK one as I got it cheap on ebay, I was going to get a Hope one- but the price was so close I chose the CK instead. I've got a cheap Token (http://www.tokenproducts.com/) one in my Kaffenback which is my commuter/ training/ light touring/ off road (ish) do it all everyday bike and with around 1200 miles through winter and down dirt tracks is just as smooth as the CK and at £25 a bit of a bargain.

stevieboy

Other than a minor adjustment to the pre-load on the bearings on my Hope unit (once they'd bedded in) I would say it's fit and forget. It's had about 800 miles of use with 500 of them in winter with no problems at all.

Just to compare I used to have to strip my old headset every 80-100 miles due to grit ingress.

But as said above any headset with decent sealed cartridge bearings should be less hassle.

Prowler

Thanks for your advice.

This comment pretty well summarizes what I was looking for here:

stevieboy wrote:

...any headset with decent sealed cartridge bearings should be less hassle.

As a footnote, a related bit of information some of you may find useful: According to a SKF salesperson, there are major differences in how different bearing greases tolerate water. SKF (among others, I assume) has a specific water resistant product, that is considerably better than general purpose grease in applications where bearings are exposed to water.