Originally Posted by
le mans
i collected a front end damaged ladies bike which was good for parts, the fork was bent back. what i found was the head tube wasn't right, the bottom cup [racers] just slide in and out freely, i grabbed another one of it's size, same thing.. so the tube opened up, expanded
something to look at
but you might be lucky there
Hi Le Mans,
I volunteered and then got hired on at my local bike co-op. Have seen a lot of "department" store bikes or Walmart level bicycle shaped objects. Actually found that a lot of those low end BSOs had headset cups that were weird proprietary sized along with the headtube. They weren't 1" or 1 1/8" sized. Something in between, their headset cups won't fit into a 1" system headtube, but a 1 1/8" headset cup is too large to be pressed in either.
Another thing that we noticed, was that most of those odd ball sized headset cups on those BSOs, would just drop right in, you could lift them out with just your fingers. If the customer is lucky, it is tight enough that a pop can shim could work. Other times the tolerances are so loose that there is no real fix.