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Old 08-14-22 | 10:28 PM
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79pmooney
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Joined: Oct 2014
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From: Portland, OR

Bikes: (2) ti TiCycles, 2007 w/ triple and 2011 fixed, 1979 Peter Mooney, ~1983 Trek 420 now fixed and ~1973 Raleigh Carlton Competition gravel grinder

Tanges are good headsets. Not great. Not Stronglight roller bearing or Chris King but they will get you a solid 8000 miles to where you are now and another 2000 after you go loose ball. I'd put loose ball in that headset bottom race (all that fit minus one), order the Tange and swap when the indexing comes back. (Corollary to Murphy's La; once your headset knows its replacement is in-house, it will go near forever.)

Oh, won't matter here but nice to know - Tange headsets are interchangeable. I've done lots of mix-and-matching to achieve stack heights. Don't have enough stack for the Levin? Use just the high quality bottom cup and cone and the upper and locknut from the el cheap OEM HS that bike shops carry for the low end bikes. You'll never know it when riding. The middle Tange line is intermediate stack, looks more like a Levin and has closer tolerances and gets less grit and water but doesn't have the full Levin seal. Works quite well on top. (But even that OEM top will go the full 8000 of the Levin bottom.) And keep all your Tange parts. It's fun what you can cobble together when a new bike shows up.

Tange is one of those Japanese firms that has been making bicycle stuff forever. We think of the Japanese starting at the '70s bike boom. No, they were solidly into bikes 70 years before that.
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