Sixty Fiver

Set about modifying my new Raleigh Twenty by replacing the nylon bushing in the headset with a proper bearing assembly to improve the handling and stiffen things up a little as better wheels and better braking is in my future and the thing descends at some pretty high speeds.

All good reasons to do a little upgrade to the stock set up.

Discovered that the workmanship on Raleigh forks was a little lacking so when I took the fork out prepped the crown race seat which should be 26.4 but all the paint they left increased that measure just a little.



I tried replacing the entire headset with a Ritchey thread less and experimented with using the R20 clamp and the locknut to set the tension and found the clamp does not sit on the compression ring as well as I would like (so you can't get a great pre-load setting) and in fitting a spacer found it moved the clamp up just enough to reduce it's effectiveness.

And that clamp needs to be done up really tight whether you run a stock set up or have decided to modify things.

So today I did what I should have done in the first place and took everything apart and cut my head tube down by 9mm and refaced the head tube so the total height reduction was 10mm... which is the depth of the Raleigh setting nut and my 2mm spacer.

Put everything back together and think we have a winner.



And I finally named the new kid after a certain British hotel owner.

November

The pics are so much bigger on this site! (I'm Corso on the "Raleigh Twenty" site) Very well done headset mod.

p.s. The more I see the 451 wheel size, the more I like them.

Sixty Fiver

Corso... If you are planning on upgrading to alloy wheels you can get the CR18 in a 451 size for the same price as the 406 and they come in 28 and 36 spoke drillings.

November

I'll do that on my "next" R20. Just found THIS on ebay.

Sixty Fiver

I now have three more of these upgrades lined up... two for friends and one for my P20.

The skill level required for this is not that high and can be done with hand tools if you have a really good eye for such things... having a shop full of frame tools makes it much easier but the base skills still need to be there.

You can get a decent thread less headset for $20.00 - $25.00 and will need to do some simple calculations as to how much to remove from the headset as the stack height of different headsets varies.

harlond

Following the suggestion of TrentValley at the Raleigh Twenty site, I attempted this modification using a 28.6mm seatpost clamp. I got the Sinz clamp, because it looked like the shortest clamp. I dremeled off the lip so it would go down onto the steerer. I used a Tange Technoglide TG32STR threadless headset because it looked to have a very low rise. With that combo, I was able to install the headset without cutting the headtube. With the seatpost clamp and both nuts from the original Raleigh headset, I expect this to remain tight. I did find that installing the quill stem with the seatpost clamp tightened was not possible.

jur

And I found THIS in that auction:

kingfish254

Photos of this would be great.

harlond

This do?