Are there any bearings like this for 'one and an eighth' inch steer tubes? What size head tube?

well of course they won't be as robust as these, being from a motor cycle. But I would be glad to use motor cycle bearings if I could make them fit. This is for a cargo bike I am designing.

There are needle bearing headset mades but you would need to buy it all so you have the right races to work with them. Actually I would call them tapered bearing headsets. Crane Creek and Chris King are 2 of several companies that sell them. Roger

when Stronglight made a Conic straight roller bearing headset they were a much flatter cone than those..

On End hits from the standard taper ... jam them too tightly together
a wheel bearing like you show turns 90 degrees from the ground..

The Stronglight roller bearings weren't tapered:



While a tapered roller bearing has lower rolling resistance than a cylindrical bearing (since the radius of rotation differs along the length of the roller, there is necessarily some sliding contact with a cylindrical roller; a tapered roller eliminates this), this was deemed inconsequential since headsets are not in constant rotation. Tapered rollers are much fussier about alignment than the cylindrical rollers, and the OP's picture suggests that even motorcycle headsets use cylindrical rollers.

OK the race was conic , the rollers Not .. not a good language engineer .. obviously ..

edit, above ..

the one Stronglight headset where the cone apex faces each other may be better ..

My Ice beater bike got that one .. delta & A9 the apex both face upward .
roadie and cross-tourer got that one ..

Id just build around Chris King's head sets .. Is my suggestion

have a 1" 2 nut, and a 9/8" Grip Nut...

my only threadless fork bike has an integrated Dia Compe/Cane Creek setup.
It came like that, frame machining holds the bearing cartridge.

IF You want those motorcycle bearings , buy them
and then engineer machining of the frame around them ,
rather than the other way around..

Chris king and cane creek do not make needle bearing headsets.

- joel

i've had one of these:



since '95 (American Classic Trilock, with tapered roller bearings) on a bike with about 30-40000 miles on it. good as the day i bought it. a little surprised, that it never really sold that well...

it's secured and adjustable with just a tiny hex wrench. locking principal reverses tradition, in that the "locknut" pushes AWAY from the threaded cup when the (3) setscrews in it are tightened.

The shimano then the KK and CC solved the fretting problem by building a composite bearing. It uses balls and a tapered surface that eliminates the fretting problem inherent in road bike headsets. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/i...-steering.html

great, just need to go back in Time to where they were not yet discontinued,
then get them made in other sizes..

Never seen a headset made with those bearings the OP is asking about in an integrated headset, in semi ? well remember the one huey is talking about but never saw one in person. My best guess is that the answer is not because for some reason you have standards, and IO probably will be way too heavy to be used in a bike aswell, maybe over built, durable tho.

How about this BMX head set? Does it have rolling pin bearings?

Velo-orange has one, but the bearings are held with plastic.

that is a ball bearing one i bet. what is the appeal of needle bearings? load capacity? if you want something with big balls try a fsa pig, it uses 1/4 inch balls

You will see the Stronglight bearing retainer in JDT's picture , 4th post. is plastic.

never held one of those Odyssey integrated headsets in my hand , so you're on your own.

order it and see , return it if it's not right. .

Is not.

Is so,

Aint a steel retainer like common ball bearings in retainers..

my experience is :

I have them on 3 bikes , do you you have a stronglight delta/A9 headset?

I have A-9's on four bikes and a spare in a drawer. No plastic parts at all.

Ok show me your steel bearing retainers with the bearing rollers in them.

mine are just like John's in the picture , and the only metal in that is the rollers them selves.

the races are stainless steel , but not shown.

The rollers themselves are steel; the retainer holding them is indeed plastic. By shining a light through it, you can see that the retainer is made of translucent, brown plastic:

I pulled out my spare and I have to admit that you are right. I misremembered.

The races are not stainless, however. That's not the best material for bearing races and they're very attracted to a magnet.

where can I buy one?

The needle bearing Stronglight A-9 is no longer made. They now have cartridge bearings.

I stocked up when xxcycle.com was selling them for $26. Mine are French threaded.

get this one ..https://chrisking.com/headsets/hds_steelset

if you manage to trash the bearings, they are replaceable..



Or inch and a half ..
2 of them, or or mix in a 1.5" bottom, and a 1.125"top

https://chrisking.com/headsets/hds_onepointfive

theres a 1.25" made too ..

Tange makes a similar headset, but only the lower race is roller bearings. This makes sense, since the lower race takes virtually all the load, and roller bearings do have slightly higher friction than ball bearings.

original question :

I would get away from just the bicycle industry sources and go to

an actual industrial bearing supplier and look thru their catalogs ..

those we have been going back and forth about ,(other than CK) the one above included ,are 1"

the machine shop/frame builder you will contract to actually build the thing

can likely cope with non standard parts.. ..

Those stronglight plastic retainers are bloody good. I serviced a properly abused one recently and expected all the bearings
to fall out of the retainer but it all held together perfectly.