I got my 456 evo today hooray!!! So obviously started to put together asap. But…. it came with a smoothie headset that I’m struggling to fit. And seeing as ti comes with no instructions so no one can accuse me of not reading the manual I thought I would make a big cup of tea and submit to the combined wisdom of the forum to see if I could find an answer.

So – in short – i got the LBS to fit the headset cups. I’ve put it all together in what only seems the right logical order with the bearing in the cup:

Then the metal ring thing after that:

Then the top bit:

Problem is I do it all up but it then there is still play and it rocks back and forward in the top cup/bearing assembly. Now I am a bit of a cack hand when it comes to things like this – so I may well have put it together wrongly, but for the life of me I cannot work out how.

Any suggestions?

I can take further pictures if it helps.

Email me pics to him at shedfire dot com – and I’ll have a look.

I had a similar problem when I fitted one to my Inbred 853. However tightly I did up the bolts there was still a gap around the top cups (like in your photo but a bit less). However, I went for a short ride and it ‘clicked’ into place and I then retightened it correctly.

I’ve got a new Smoothie Headset problem now, several years later, in that I can’t shift the cups from the Inbred frame to fit in my 456. They won’t even budge a micro mm. Never known anything like it. 😕

Unless they have decided to improve/add seal protection I would give the smoothie a miss. Give it a few wet rides and the lower race will be oozing a nice shade of reddy brown. Would look instead at a mix and match Hope one.

Thanks Brant but I actually managed to solve it late last night although still don;t know root of problem.

So with the spacers and headset all attached there was a 2-3mm gap above the height of the steerer – which I normally find enough. I put a bigger spacer on so there is more like a 1cm gap and the whole stack pre-loaded up fine without having to over-tighten.

So I’m guessing its one of 2 things – either when tightening up it was actually tightening in to the star spangled nut and not the headset assembly OR the headset assembly has a bit of spring/squidge in it and so I was ending up tightening the bolt up against the top of the steerer.

that metal ring looks like a crown race. Are you sure you have the order of bits right?

You really shouldnt need to use 1cm clearance over the steerer unless something is seriously wrong.

once you have the stem bolts done up take the top cap off and make sure that the top stem clamp bolt is over the steerer tube and not just tightening against thin air

Hi, greetings to all, especially evo456 owners 🙂
I might have similar issue with my evo456 and smoothie regular headset. My LBS installed smoothie headset; cups to frame and crown race to fork. I put it all together at home to measure proper steering tube height and noticed wide gap between crown race and bottom bearing.

I still don’t have star nut inside to keep things together but I wonder if the gap will be any smaller after preload. Before installation crown race would “click” into bottom bearing cup and there would be no gap.
I hope things will settle in slowly after few warmup rides with evo.
cheers!

It was same with me. The metal hoop that sits above the bearing seems to have abit of a ‘squidge’ in it as its sprung/compresses in as you preload it. It all does up tight and works smoothly for me now.

Update: I went to my LBS again to cut the fork and put star nut in. Service guy took a rubber mallet and gently tapped fork from bottom and crown race finally set into lower bearing cup. The gap that was is no more and first ride went smooth 🙂