Just rebuilding a mate’s bike after swapping the frame. Looking at the headset/forks, something isn’t right. There’s a visible gap above the top of the forks and the bottom part of the headset. When you get down and look up you can see the grease and bearings, what’ve we done wrong? It shouldn’t be like that surely, but it’s all tight and smooth turning. Any ideas before we take the forks out again?

Wrong crown race? Did it come with the headset?

Ah, that’ll be it. Random old headset from the parts box, but crown race still on forks. Think we both just assumed it’d fit. Blind leading the blind here 🙂

Like a things bike there’s a number of different standards for the angle that the race contacts the bearings 🙁

And it looks like I haven’t got the crown race for the headset I’ve fitted. Aargh. The old frame had a sealed/cartridge headset.