Crowning glory

At last a chance to work on fitting the headset to the bike frame - an FS Pig DH Pro I picked up on sale. A simple task of making sure that the frame is clean round the area for fitting and aligning the parts that fit to the bike frame as close to true as you can manage. Then thread the headsetpress tool through, and tighten until it all stops. Job done.

Next, remove fork from old bike and strip off the rather nice Avid 7 brake levers I had fitted previously to the Salcano. I also robbed off the headset spacers as I know I will probably need them. The poor old bike now rather resembles the state the P3 has been in since the Summer.

I change the brakes on the front fork, fitting the new Deore XT ones in place of the cheap no name ones already fitted. Then back into the cold to add the fork....

This is when I encounter the unexpected problem and discover a useful bit of information. Not all crown races are the same. Whilst the forks have a crown race fitted, the part that allows the fork to swivel on the frame mount of the headset, it will not seat comfortably. This is entirely probably because the crown race is from a standard threadless headset, and the Pig is a cupless headet. Not a disaster to replace as the fitting tool for a new one is essentially a pipe, and the removal tool is effectively a hammer and blunt screwdriver. There are tools designed to make this easier, but they are essentially the same thing.

Now I am faced with a partially fitted fork, which will fall off at a moment's notice. To make myself feel better I assemble all the final parts with a light fix onto the bike. At least I can now see how the bike will look when finished and I can swap the bikes over for storage spaces.