Building a frame up over the next few days and am pretty sure when I pop my headset in I am supposed to add a little grease, yet nothing I’ve read online says this. What is the general feeling here, given it is effectively metal on metal…

Thin smear from me.

Yeah a little bit of grease

I apply grease liberally before starting to press the cups in. There will be too much for operation, but you can wipe some off and it’s to ease the press fitting operation not anything else. General thinnish white grease like the bike lube ‘lube juice’ in the orange tub is fine.

As I’m putting the bearings back in the cups after pressing I tend to add a little waterproof grease to the top and bottom faces of the cartridge. Not sure if it actually helps, but my headsets never seize and are always in top condition if/when dismantled later.

Just in case it’s not obvious, pressing cups in one at a time is far easier than trying to do both together which is a continual nightmare of alignment and re-alignment. It really should be obvious and I thought it was just me stupid enough to have tried it, but it seems a fairly common way to make life unnecessarily hard! 🙂

Grease not needed. They don’t seize in without it.

always grease any metal to metal contact. good practice unless you use locktite. Never ever make a dry joint – it can corrode, fret, seize

Cool, a liberal amount it is then…