Originally Posted by churchkey
Hello all.
I am rebuilding my bicycle and I cannot get the headset off for the life of me. It looks like no other headset I have seen (since I have been looking, which has been since this one started being a pain about a week and a half ago). Everyone looks at me like I am crazy when I describe it to them.
Unfortunately, this type of headset is an awful design (used on a lot of Japanese bikes in the mid 80s). The knurled race makes it extremely difficult to adjust successfully, the lockring is a non-standard toothed thingy, and there is no dustcap for the top bearings, meaning they'll get filled up with dirt fast.
I've wrestled with these headsets before. Here's a recent thread on dealing with them:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=218992.
If you get too sick of that thing, my advice is to get a cheap JIS headset with normal wrench-flat race and lockring, and dustcaps. I bought one of them off ebay for about $10, and it's quite good:
http://cgi.ebay.com/JIS-Replacement-...QQcmdZViewItem