Another daft question from me!!

MrJim007

Have got my bike built back up and I thought all was now sorted and the last thing that is niggling me is a bit of play in the headset.
If I tighten the screw enough to take out the play the bars dont swing freely around the front and feels like this would wreck the bearings quicker. If I loosen it off the front gets looser again but the play comes back.
Its an intergrated headset (1x1/8, 36x45) and im sure its all in there, ie. crown race then bottom bearing, then top bearing with race on top of that, then a cone spacer followed by stem then top cap. Star fangled nut is in straight as far as I can tell.
Am I missing something?

Cheers.

gozzy

Just to be sure, are you following all these steps?:
Loosen stem bolts
Tighten headset/ star nut to just take out play
Tighten stem bolts
Loosen off star nut a touch.
Check for play.

Matthewfalle

As above plus try the following (it sometimes works):

Loosen everything up so it all jangles about.
Front end back on the floor, try and rock the bike so that you can feel everything seat in - sometimes the bearings just aren't sat properly and no matter how much tightening/loosening you do it gives the results that you have described (my Planet X headset in the Team Superlight does this and is particularly susceptible to headset adjustment for some weird crazy reason).

Alternatively, strip down and reassemble checking that you have the bearings and races in correctly, not upside (which sounds silly but is very easy to do).

I presume that everything is nice and clean, new grease, no pitting/rust/schizer in there?

on-yer-bike

I had exactly this problem and it turned out to be the wrong fork crown race. It looked the same but obviously wasnt.

MrJim007

Yep, everything is clean and tidy in there, I had stripped the frame naked and rebuilt everything back up with a new gruppo. I will pull it apart again and double check everything.
Thats an interesting point OnYerBike, as I hadnt bothered to swap the crown race for the new one that came with the new headset as I assumed they would all be the same, that could well be the problem.
Cheers for the pointers chaps.

gozzy

I reckon you'll have found your problem there with the wrong crown race.

MrJim007

*Resurection*

I have finally got round to swapping the crown race. The problem still persists, grrrrr!!
Ive rechecked everything, made sure all is sitting properly but no joy. The only thing I can think is that the old bearings might have been 36x36 rather than the 45x36 I put in. Being relatively inexperienced im not sure how different these bearings would be. Would they be so different that they wouldn't fit in or could it be a possibility?

Cheers.