Hey lads/lassies,
Quick question. Are the lower seals on conventional cage-bearing headsets usually cross compatible? The one on my current headset is… ehhh… pretty deformed, which means it isn’t sitting right and is probably the source of my stiff draggy steering issues. Now, I figure I can go ahead and ride it today anyway, but I should get a replacement. Question is, if I nab one for a campagnola/FSA/whatever-I-can-find headset, will it work alright with my own no-name headset? Bound to be cheaper than a new headset and the bearings haven’t gotten much abuse anyway, so it’d be a shame to replace it before it’s time.

For anyone who comes across this issue in the future, my mate Psycholist on another forum provided the following solution;

If you’re very lucky – and can find this part spare – swapping the seal out might work, but usually the seals are just different enough that they’ll either not work as seals or seize the headset.

The best cheap and cheerful remedy is to make a new seal from an old bike tube. Either cut a ring out that’ll fit where the old seal was (Which depending on the size of the seal isn’t guaranteed to stay in place) or else stretch a length of tube over the whole lower headset bearing. If you put a cable tie around the bottom of the headtube you can get this to stay in place pretty well. I did it back in the bad old days with one bike I had. The steering gets a little stiffer but not much.