I am rebuilding a late '70's Colnago Mexico. It has a Colnago headset which I believe is made by Omas.

After cleaning all the bearings, races and cups, I greased up the cups, placed 30 balls in each and proceeded to put everything back together.

I tightened everything hand tight while rotating the forkblades until snug. It seemed fairly smooth but there was a considerable amount of play in the headset when I pressed against the dropouts, so I tightened it up just a little at a time until I was able to get the play out of the steering tube.

Now it's feeling like it's binding, the balls feel like they're grinding and I'm beginning to question whether this headset has seen better days. The races on the cups looked okay, and the race on top of the head tube looked all right. The race on the steering tube had some visual wear (black line all around race) but wasn't rough feeling.

I was pretty gentle with tightening up the headset but can't seem to get the play out without that grinding sensation coming back.

It's been a long time since I've done one of these and I'm curious if I've done everything correctly. I have a Super Record headset and was thinking of switching them out but wanted to run this by the board and see what everybody thought.

Thanks for any advice.

Kurt

Make sure you left a bb's worth of space in the headset. You don't want a full, squeezed-in compliment of bb's in the races - or it will bind-up. So one under what appears full is correct. So give this a shout, if you haven't already. If push comes to shove, new 1" threaded headsets are still readily available. A Tange Levin would be the standard you'd see back then. They were a Campy clone so good that everyone bought them over Campy. I'm still running one from 1982. Meticulously cared for but not pampered - it's as good as new.

Good luck!