Crown race, pressed on or split?

I have a question about crown race’s. I have two bikes, both running FSA Orbit XL II headset’s. The idea being I can swop forks between my hardtail and full sus rig if required.

The orignal headset from around 2007 had a crown race that needed to be pressed on the fork as expected. I bought the same headset circa late 2009 and the bottom crown race was split, negating the need for it to be pressed on.

Fine I thought, they have changed the design to make fitting it easier. Well I have now come to change a set of forks, and ordered a spare crown race from chainreaction for an Orbit XL II.

Anyway this race shows up without a split in it, needing pressing onto the fork again?

Now I’m a little confused as to which is right and which is wrong.

My full sus bike has been fine with a split race for a few years, but was this a mistake in the package of the headset?

Perhaps chainreaction have old stock?

Should I just split the later race and crack on?

Anyone had a similar experience?

Answers on a postcard…..?

Thanks

MP

Should I just split the later race and crack on?

This

Although a split crown race only makes fitting and removal easier….if both bikes have XLII it doesn’t matter as you won’t need to remove/re-fit crown race anyway

FWIW my older XLII has a split crown race and my newer one doesn’t

yeh, out with the hacksaw IMO

I’ve an Orbit XL II on one bike with a split crown race and another FSA headset on the Boardman that isn’t split. I swapped the forks of the older bike the other day with the split crown race and fitted that to the Boardman with it’s headset that had a pressed on crown race on it’s original forks. Everything works just fine.

Re reading that I’m not sure it makes sense but The simple answer is that in my experience it doesn’t matter.

I’ve never found fitting/removing crown races to be an issue or an onerous task at all so I just fit what I have

The crown race only holds the bearing inner race still while the outer race spins round – so (as an engineer), I would say it doesn’t matter whether it is split or not. As it’s tapered, the overall diameter isn’t critical, so if you split the crown race the bearing will just sit a fraction higher.
The only downside might be that you need to tweak the headset a few times to overcome any settling of a non pressed on crown race.

So, hacksaw out and file off the burrs, and avoid scratching the paint on the fork crown.

Nice one, thanks for the repsonse’s. Kind of the conclusion we had come too. Hacksaw it is!