Nuovo Record Headset overhaul
Ciera
I am changing out the ball bearings in a Campy headset from a 1983
bike. I assume it is Nuovo Record. It takes 3/16" ball bearings. I can
fit in 22 loose bearings and there is space left over roughly equal to
half a ball diameter. According to the mechanic that taught a bike
maintenance course at my local bike shop, this is the right number of
balls to use, i.e., 22. However, according to the Barnett's Manual I
should remove 2 bearings and use a final count of 20. How many do you
guys use for your old Nuovo Record headsets?
I've procrastinated on this project for a long time. The bike has been
stripped down for 10 years and stupidly I didn't keep grease on the
races. The cups are still clean and shiny, but the cone races are
dusted with light rust. I'm thinking that I can clean up the rust and
the headset will still function OK. I mean, it's a headset, not hubs.
Is this faulty reasoning?
thirty-six
When I could be bothered to service headsets, I would assemble them
dry to determiune the number of balls. I'd use one less ball than the
number that gives definite freedom. Use a Brillo pad to remove the
surface rust, wash with oil and lubricate with the softest grease you
can get away with.
landotter
Full race minus one is the general rule, AFAIK. Use 21 balls. Clean
cones with ultrafine steel wool and some oil. Shouldn't be a problem
at all.
John Dacey
You don't give enough information to positively identify the headset
model.
Does it have steel cups? If yes, the options are:
1040/A (Gran Sport) - 25+25 five thirty-seconds balls (no retainer)
1040 (Record Pista) - 25+25 five thirty-seconds balls (no retainer)
1039 (Nuovo Record) - 20+20 three sixteenths balls (in retainer)
If it's a 1039 headset you *may* (but don't feel constrained to do it)
add a ball to each cup if the retainer is omitted. A light sheen of
rust on the cups or crown race should not disqualify this from further
use, but obviously clean them up as much as reasonably possible before
reassembly.
-------------------------------
John Dacey
Business Cycles, Miami, Florida
Since 1983
Our catalog of track equipment: online since 1996
http://businesscycles.com
-------------------------------
Ciera
Strada sold in 1983. The Medici sales brochure indicates that the Pro
Strada model was spec'd with Super Record headsets, but I think SR had
some black highlights and mine doesn't. I know my headset isn't a
Grand Sport or Pista, so that why I said Nuovo Record. My retainers
hold 20 balls each.
I'll clean up the rust best as I can and install 21 Grade 25 balls
with some good grease. Although it has been mentioned in this group
before, it bears repeating that Evapo-rust does a great job of rust
removal and is safe and odorless. Following Evapo-rust I'll buff out
the races as you guys suggest.
One more thing. The keyed washer of my headset is slightly worn and
had done minor damage to the fork threads. I'm going to grind off the
key (or tab) of the washer as recommended by Barnetts (unless someone
here convinces me to leave the tab alone).
AMuzi
The Record #1039 steel headset and the Super Record #4041
aluminum use the same #2101 retainer. There is no 'nuovo'
version.
Is there some problem with the tab washer?
--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971
Jay Beattie
> Thanks, John, landotter, and thirty-six. The bike is a Medici Pro
> Strada sold in 1983. The Medici sales brochure indicates that the Pro
> Strada model was spec'd with Super Record headsets, but I think SR had
> some black highlights and mine doesn't. I know my headset isn't a
> Grand Sport or Pista, so that why I said Nuovo Record. My retainers
> hold 20 balls each.
SR headset had aluminum cups and not chromed steel. Noticeable
difference, particularly if you were not good with a wrench. It is
easy to mar the faces on the SR headset. Here's SR and NR headsets
(scroll down):
http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=77032
> I'll clean up the rust best as I can and install 21 Grade 25 balls
> with some good grease. Although it has been mentioned in this group
> before, it bears repeating that Evapo-rust does a great job of rust
> removal and is safe and odorless. Following Evapo-rust I'll buff out
> the races as you guys suggest.
>
> One more thing. The keyed washer of my headset is slightly worn and
> had done minor damage to the fork threads. I'm going to grind off the
> key (or tab) of the washer as recommended by Barnetts (unless someone
> here convinces me to leave the tab alone).
The keyed washer on the SR was aluminum, so it couldn't damage the
steel steerer -- maybe you do have a NR. I used keyed and un-keyed
washers. It only makes a difference if you are doing a one-wrench
operation, and you don't want the lock nut to spin the adjustable cup
(or vice versa). I typically used two wrenches.
That is a great bike. I always wanted one -- or a Masi. -- Jay
Beattie.
Jobst Brandt
Scrap those antique head-sets. Those head bearings could not survive
fork steertube fretting, generating dimples in the fore and aft
quadrant of the top and bottom races (that's the clue). Get Dura Ace
or Chris King units that have a plain bearing swivel to take up fork
fretting motion while ball bearings carry steering rotation. They
will last thousands of miles and never generate a dimpled race.
By the way, in contrast to the text with these dimpled bearings, they
are fretting damage, not Brinelling, but I think we went through all
that already.
Jobst Brandt
thirty-six
Not again! YAWN. The headset is servicable, why throw it away,
idiot.
Ska-T
> The Record #1039 steel headset and the Super Record #4041
> aluminum use the same #2101 retainer. There is no 'nuovo'
> version.
Mine is all steel, no aluminum.
> Is there some problem with the tab washer?
The two corners of the tab are rounded, one more than the other, so
that the tab will probably no longer stay in the groove.
Ska-T
> SR headset had aluminum cups and not chromed steel. Noticeable
> difference, particularly if you were not good with a wrench.
> The keyed washer on the SR was aluminum, so it couldn't damage the
> steel steerer -- maybe you do have a NR. I used keyed and un-keyed
> washers. It only makes a difference if you are doing a one-wrench
> operation, and you don't want the lock nut to spin the adjustable cup
> (or vice versa). I typically used two wrenches.
Thanks, Jay. I'm glad (now) that I don't have SR. Mine is all steel.
I'll use an unkeyed washer and two wrenches.
> That is a great bike. I always wanted one -- or a Masi.
Hey, if you are about 5' tall I've got a second, much smaller Pro
Strada. :-) Bought it in 1984 for the wife and she rode it less than
50 mi. It's been hanging in the garage ever since. I know, I know,
wrong forum.
Ska-T
> Scrap those antique head-sets.
Can't. Laid off. No money. A PhD, 6 yrs of post-doc, and 20 yr of
experience doesn't mean much against cheaper H-1 labor. Perhaps you
can fund me from your royalties considering that I bought a copy of
your book in the early 80s.
Ciera
Google account.
-Ciera
Tom Sherman °_°
Just be happy you do not live in one of those socialist western European
countries.
--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.
Jobst Brandt
> Not again! YAWN. The headset is servicable, why throw it away,
> idiot.
If it has dimples, it is not "serviceable". Dimples make it "Indexed
Steering" a useless condition that cannot be fixed.
Jobst Brandt
landotter
certain it's not synonymous with dimpling.
A traditional steel cupped headset will last for thousands of miles
without dimpling, especially on a road bike.
FWIW, my go to headset for basic applications is a FSA TH-857. It's
ridiculously cheap, well finished, and has rubber wipe seals. Fill it
with grease and go. Ten for the price of a King. For threaded, the
$36 roller bearing model from VO looks worth a try.
Don't get me wrong, I think CK makes some lovely parts, especially
their hubs, but $150 for a headset? No thank you. Especially when it
needs special tools to install, and a Cane Creek S3 is $50.
Dave
"landotter" <land...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a7d66203-34e8-423c...@n32g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
I am going through a lot of traditional threaded headsets - all killed by
fretting. I assume the vibration during long straight downhills is doing
the damage.
The classic way of prolonging the life of an indexed headset is to replace
the balls in the carrier with loose balls. This way, the pits no longer line
up. On one old Campy unit, I have progressively:
- replaced the ball carrier with a greater number of loose balls
- rotated the crown race slightly so that the pits on the race do not line
up with those on the lower cup.
- replaced just the crown race
But I agree with Brandt - ultimately Shimano headsets are the answer; a
great design.
AMuzi
Changing ball count is temporary as some balls will align in
the old divots making the rest fall in shortly with a new
pattern. Ditto with removing/pressing cups so the divots
don't align top and bottom.
There was a guy in Oklahoma (TefSeal) who produced a PTFE
3/16" torus to replace the Campagnolo retainers. It worked
but he's long gone.
Headsets are cheap. Why bother? Once it's annoying, just
replace it.
Dave
"AMuzi" <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote in message
news:ibmgvb$1fe$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> Headsets are cheap. Why bother? Once it's annoying, just replace it.
>
Why not replace the headset every time it gets indexed? Because:it took me
personally 20 minutes to replace the ball carrier with loose balls. This
bought me a full season of riding. It would have taken longer to get the
bike to a shop to get a new headset pressed in. I do not have a press,
although perhaps I should buy one.
The additional benefit of doing this simple fix myself was that I did not
have to:
- Laboriously explain in simple words what the problem was to the
minimum-wage shop monkeys
- Listen to condescending comments about how old my bike was
- Get past the bullshit about how impossible it is to find a 1" threaded
headset, and that these "are not made anymore".
- If they did have a headset in stock (unlikely), make sure that it was not
a useless, incompatible JIS unit, and they installed without knowing the
difference.
- Have the shop owner make the hard pitch to sell me a new bike
- Wait 2 weeks for them to do the work.
- For the headset, pay double that I could have bought it myself off of Ebay
- When the bike came back from the shop, have to check every single part to
make sure they didn't screw something up.
There...
AMuzi
>> Headsets are cheap. Why bother? Once it's annoying, just replace it.
Dave wrote:
> Why not replace the headset every time it gets indexed? Because:it took me
> personally 20 minutes to replace the ball carrier with loose balls. This
> bought me a full season of riding. It would have taken longer to get the
> bike to a shop to get a new headset pressed in. I do not have a press,
> although perhaps I should buy one.
>
> The additional benefit of doing this simple fix myself was that I did not
> have to:
>
> - Laboriously explain in simple words what the problem was to the
> minimum-wage shop monkeys
> - Listen to condescending comments about how old my bike was
> - Get past the bullshit about how impossible it is to find a 1" threaded
> headset, and that these "are not made anymore".
> - If they did have a headset in stock (unlikely), make sure that it was not
> a useless, incompatible JIS unit, and they installed without knowing the
> difference.
> - Have the shop owner make the hard pitch to sell me a new bike
> - Wait 2 weeks for them to do the work.
> - For the headset, pay double that I could have bought it myself off of Ebay
> - When the bike came back from the shop, have to check every single part to
> make sure they didn't screw something up.
> There...
Ouch.
I just sold a set of Michelins to a guy visiting from
Kazakhstan (where one cannot readily find Michelin Pros in
Yellow). In what undeveloped county do you ride?
landotter
> "landotter" <landot...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Which headsets are you ruining? I've dimpled a steel Tange, but it
took years of riding. Alloy cups might be the problem?
Jay Beattie
By the way, I was wandering around Performance (boo, hiss) the other
day during my lunch break and noticed that quill stem, 1" headset
touring bikes were making a come-back. There were a couple of loaded
tourers (Fuji?) with olde tyme front ends. -- Jay Beattie.
Jobst Brandt
>>>>>> Two topics on my mind: (1) How many balls, and (2) Rust. I am
>>>>>> changing out the ball bearings in a Campy headset from a 1983
>>>>>> bike. I assume it is Nuovo Record. It takes 3/16" ball
>>>>>> bearings. I can fit in 22 loose bearings and there is space
>>>>>> left over roughly equal to half a ball diameter. According to
>>>>>> the mechanic that taught a bike maintenance course at my local
>>>>>> bike shop, this is the right number of balls to use, i.e.,
>>>>>> 22. However, according to the Barnett's Manual I should remove
>>>>>> 2 bearings and use a final count of 20. How many do you guys
>>>>>> use for your old Nuovo Record headsets?
Barnett was barking up the wrong tree. The head bering problem was
solved a while ago by separating the off-axis swivel, that causes
fretting damage, from steering rotation of the fork. The number of
bearing balls has practically no affect on this as was determined by
pragmatic trials years ago.
>>>>>> I've procrastinated on this project for a long time. The bike
>>>>>> has been stripped down for 10 years and stupidly I didn't keep
>>>>>> grease on the races. The cups are still clean and shiny, but
>>>>>> the cone races are dusted with light rust. I'm thinking that I
>>>>>> can clean up the rust and the headset will still function
>>>>>> OK. I mean, it's a headset, not hubs. Is this faulty
>>>>>> reasoning? You don't give enough information to positively
>>>>>> identify the headset model.
After fretting has displaced lubricant from ball contacts on the
races, rust will easily follow. The rust is not the problem, but
rather the fretting wear at these locations.
It is synonymous with fretting, the cause dimples.
> A traditional steel cupped headset will last for thousands of miles
> without dimpling, especially on a road bike.
Especially on on MTB's that have more constant steering motions on
trail riding, (that replenish lubricant) something that road bicycles
do not do on long descents on fairly straight roads with enough
roughness to cause the fork to vibration fore and aft. That IS the
cause of fretting in head bearings.
> FWIW, my go to headset for basic applications is a FSA TH-857. It's
> ridiculously cheap, well finished, and has rubber wipe seals. Fill
> it with grease and go. Ten for the price of a King. For threaded,
> the $36 roller bearing model from VO looks worth a try.
If it doen't have a swivel cup to take up non-rotaty head bearing
motion, it's a dead horse. Just get a Shimano, cartridge bearing
head-set and be done with it. They truly last for many thousand
miles.
> Don't get me wrong, I think CK makes some lovely parts, especially
> their hubs, but $150 for a headset? No thank you. Especially when
> it needs special tools to install, and a Cane Creek S3 is $50.
From that comment, I take it you would rather ride with indexed
steering on dimpled head bearings. That is not cheaper unless all the
effort maintaining them is done by free labor.
Jobst Brandt
landotter
You think it's aesthetics for an older audience, perhaps? I don't mind
quills on retrobikes, like your average omafiets or mamachari, but a
roadside serviceable headset really is superior for touring.
Jobst Brandt
> I am going through a lot of traditional threaded headsets - all
> killed by fretting. I assume the vibration during long straight
> downhills is doing the damage.
Yes, that is the source of the damage. You are a step ahead of the
"class".
> The classic way of prolonging the life of an indexed headset is to
> replace the balls in the carrier with loose balls. This way, the
> pits no longer line up. On one old Campy unit, I have
> progressively:
> Replaced the caged balls with a greater number of loose balls.
> Rotated the outer race slightly so that its pits don't line up with
> those on the inner race.
> Replaced just the crown race
These methods have been tried without success. Loose balls fall into
the old locations leaving one or two extra ones fretting into newer
and deeper dimples. You can't fool the bearing races, they fret to
death in any location. I tried that stuff about 40 years ago but
noticed that even the unloaded upper head bearing had dimples in the
fore and aft quadrant, showing that they were caused by fretting, not
Brinelling as was commonly believed.
> But I agree with Brandt - ultimately Shimano headsets are the
> answer; a great design.
You need to get the swivel motion out of the semi-static ball bearings
and into a plain bearing that can support it. Shimano uses pre-loaded
cartridge bearings that cannot make fretting motions that have sealed
lip grease while supported on a swivel base. These bearings are so
well assembled that they cannot be taken apart by hand. It takes
substantial force to separate the two races. Therefore they rock back
and forth on their swivel support, not in the ball contacts.
They are available for threaded and threadless steertubes.
Jobst Brandt
David Scheidt
:> "AMuzi" <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote
:Ouch.
The united states. That's pretty much what I'd expect from some of
my local shops. The ones I'd actually let do something like replace a
headset are better, but I'd expect to wait a lot longer than two
weeks. I'd still expect to have to adjust my brakes properly.
--
sig 33
Jobst Brandt
>>>> Headsets are cheap. Why bother? Once it's annoying, just
>>>> replace it.
>>> Why not replace the headset every time it gets indexed?
>>> Because:it took me personally 20 minutes to replace the ball
>>> carrier with loose balls. This bought me a full season of
>>> riding. It would have taken longer to get the bike to a shop to
>>> get a new headset pressed in. I do not have a press, although
>>> perhaps I should buy one.
>>> The additional benefit of doing this simple fix myself was that I
>>> did not need to:
>>> Laboriously explain in simple words what the problem was to the
>>> minimum-wage shop monkeys.
>>> Listen to condescending comments about how old my bike was get
>>> past the bullshit about how impossible it is to find a 1" threaded
>>> headset, and that these "are not made anymore".
>>> If they did have a headset in stock (unlikely), make sure that it
>>> was not a useless, incompatible JIS unit, and they installed
>>> without knowing the difference.
>>> Have the shop owner make the hard pitch to sell me a new bike
>>> Wait 2 weeks for them to do the work.
>>> For the headset, pay double that I could have bought it myself off
>>> of Ebay When the bike came back from the shop, have to check
>>> every single part to make sure they didn't screw something up.
>>> There...
>> Ouch.
>> I just sold a set of Michelins to a guy visiting from Kazakhstan
>> (where one cannot readily find Michelin Pros in Yellow). In what
>> undeveloped county do you ride?
> By the way, I was wandering around Performance (boo, hiss) the other
> day during my lunch break and noticed that quill stem, 1" headset
> touring bikes were making a come-back. There were a couple of
> loaded tourers (Fuji?) with olde tyme front ends.
So they had a bunch of old frames with threaded steertubes lying
around, and that's all they will take for a stem. Since most folks
don't know the difference or notice it, it doesn't affect sales. That
quill stems wobble from side to side and can permanently lock up with
intrusion of rain water, doesn't interest non-rider newcomers.
Jobst Brandt
Jay Beattie
>
> - Show quoted text -
Current production. See: http://www.fujibikes.com/bike/details/touring
Jobst Brandt
>>>> Ouch.
> Current production. See:
http://www.fujibikes.com/bike/details/touring
Looks like ancient low grade stuff to me. All the components and the
frame look like the parts that were burning a hole in their storage.
Jobst Brandt
thirty-six
>
> These methods have been tried without success. Loose balls fall into
> the old locations leaving one or two extra ones fretting into newer
> and deeper dimples. You can't fool the bearing races, they fret to
> death in any location. I tried that stuff about 40 years ago but
> noticed that even the unloaded upper head bearing had dimples in the
> fore and aft quadrant, showing that they were caused by fretting, not
> Brinelling as was commonly believed.
Absolute certainty, you were using an innappropriate lubricant for
your operating conditions. Top races never wear in the UK as pretty
much any lubricant is suitable, but the bottom race life is dependant
on an appropriate quality lubricant being used specific to the
conditions. It is best to change the lubricant between summer and
winter if the bike is to be operated in both hot and freezing
conditions.
thirty-six
Not on my bikes. A wobbling stem would show wear, they never have.
Installl with grease and do up tight so the bars can just be twisted
(for crash safety). I was bending my bike all over the show when I
climbed or sprinted, yet never showed any signs of wear (over 50,000
miles on one bike/stem).and the tange headset also withstood the
mileage without wear problems. Perhaps you were using too short a
spanner or hex key, the standard hex keys are too short to tighten a
stem bolt. I know at least one manufacturer used 7mm key instead of
the typical 6mm, possibly just to overcome the difficulty of adequate
tightening with standard tools. Oh yes and your insubstantial steerer
tube, standard racing gauge tube is inadequate for a farm gate.