For those who find headset sagas utterly gripping... another thrilling instalment...
I was being a bit of a f***wit before - I had measured the steerer for cutting while I was still intending to use the horrible bear-trap thingy. The expander bung has a sort of lip on it to set it at the right place in the steerer (a flange, if you will
) and this intruded into the measured space, leaving me a little bit short of adjustment room - the top-cap had been bottoming out while the headset was still slightly loose.
Anyway, that's remedied with a bit of spacer-shuffling, but I haven't been entirely happy with the headset the whole time since. It still seems to me that however I adjust it, the headset offers two options - too loose and too tight, and that if you want completely to eliminate the lateral play and rattle you have to put up with slightly crunchy steering. So I've been going for the crunchier option. This is, no doubt, taking its toll, and I can feel the beginnings of the tell-tale indexed steering of a pitted headset (after not very long at all). This doesn't much matter cos it's a cheap headset, and it will give me the excuse I need to blow some more cash I don't have on a Chris King. In red, naturally.
Which is leading me to another question - could it be that the problem all along has not been just the crappy headset, but an alignment problem with the head tube ends, or somesuch? I didn't have them faced - the LBS I bought the frame from seemed convinced it wasn't necessary with an unpainted frame. What do the headset gurus round here think? Is a spot of facing de rigueur? If I'm going to spend silly dollars on a new headset I should probably stop cutting corners elsewhere...