Last fall I fully took apart a Peugeot Triathlon, but got bogged down with a stuck seatpost (which I am happy to say, after months of PB Blaster, nudging, coaxing, sweat and tears, has finally come unstuck, with no damage to the post, or inner sleeve...).

Before the seatpost odyssey I took apart the Stronglight headset, which I'd now like to put back together. The top washers and pieces all make sense to me, but the order of assembly of the bottom rings and bearing doesn't seem intuitive. Clearly I'm a novice wrench here. Could someone tell me whether I have all pieces positioned in the right order in the photo? It seems odd to me that the bearings not be placed directly against the (plastic?) headset bottom cups, but to my memory this is how it came apart. Did I mix up my pieces? Ay...

It looks like you have the floating races placed wrong -- the smaller race goes under the retainer and the larger race on top.

Thanks for the help John. Let me make sure I understand - the races you refer to are the rings above and below the needle bearing ring on the fork tube (in the picture)? Otherwise things look right? I don't want to ruin the headset riding with it put together incorrectly.