Originally Posted by
the sci guy
So, I spent about 3 hours futzing with 3 wrenches trying to find a happy medium where the headset was tight enough to not have play with rocking the front wheels, but loose enough not to feel the grinding of the bearings and it "locking" into the various pitted areas. And it did not work. I was about 30 seconds away from ripping the thing out with a blow torch, spitting on it, crunching it into an industrial compressor then tossing it into an industrial shredder, then launching it into the sun..
So I'm taking it to another shop this week to have them rip it out, diagnose the headtube & fork, and put in another one without a notched washer and make sure it sits proper.
Replacing the threaded spacer with an ordinary washer likely will make it much easier..
But, for the indexing issue, you likely have a row of pits in the crown race.
You can purchase generic crown races that may help, and are quite cheap.
Or, if you have bearing cages, try loose bearings, + 1 ball.