WCS Carbon Gravel Cross Fork - headset compatibility

[arupaka]

Hello,

Recently I've purchased a WCS Carbon Gravel Cross Fork from Ritchey. Installed on my steel frame bike with a regular 1 1/8" external cup headset but unfortunately there's a lot of play around the lower bearing ring. I made sure the headset is properly installed, so the most likely is that the headset is not compatible.

Since the fork has an integrated race crown, I've only placed the bearing care in the bottom part.[vimeo][/vimeo]


This is the products page. It does say indeed that classic EC/threadless EC is not compatible. But I don't understand why they don't write out the ones that ARE compatible
https://ritcheylogic.com/bike/forks/wcs ... cross-fork

Would anyone have any idea of what headset should I get? A couple of pictures below.







Thank you.

[gregoryoftours]

I don't know what will be compatible for sure, but the lower needs to at least be a cartridge bearing with inner chamfer of 45°. That lower headset part doesn't even look like a cartridge bearing headset, or am I mistaken? If you have ball bearings of a non-cartridge bearing headset running directly onto the integrated carbon race that is really bad.

I think that this Ritchey WCS headset (in 1 1/8" variety) is compatible:

https://ritcheylogic.com/bike/headsets/ ... ss-headset

WCS External Cup EC Threadless Headset
33055337005

To be certain about using it without the crown race on a fork with carbon integrated race I would ask for confirmation from Ritchey tech support.

The other 1 1/8" Ritchey EC headsets all have this following information at the bottom of the specs : 'Incompatible with Ritchey WCS Carbon forks with integrated 45° crown race'.

The WCS headset doesn't have this incompatibility notice, which implies that it should be compatible.

[Brucey]

..... But I don't understand why they don't write out the ones that ARE compatible
https://ritcheylogic.com/bike/forks/wcs ... cross-fork

Isn't that precisely what they do do in the above link? There's a section explaining what headset parts you need to make it work with a 44mm head tube; is this not relevant?

As it happens I think it may not be difficult to make it work OK with the headset you have, provided it has cartridge bearings and you are able to make some spacers (eg. from plastic using scissors). Suppose you need a spacer 10mm wide to cover the crown race seating; if you mark out two concentric circles, about 41mm and 61mm, on flat sheet, then cut with scissors, you should wind up with a ring,10mm wide but clearly oversize. You need about 70% of this for a 'split ring' type spacer, one that will lie flat on the 45 degree crown race seating. You can use multiple layers of any material that you can cut for this, and in so doing, you can tailor the properties to your heart's content. A thin layer of metal over multiple layers of rubber (old inner tube) may provide a degree of shock absorption.

[tim-b]

External pics aren't too helpful in this instance. Lay everything out in as fitted order, please

[Brucey]

thinking about it, even if the headset is a loose ball type, it should be possible to modify the crown race (eg. using the SG method) and make it work. A suitable modification might be the addition of a 45 deg. chamfer.

[arupaka]

I don't know what will be compatible for sure, but the lower needs to at least be a cartridge bearing with inner chamfer of 45°. That lower headset part doesn't even look like a cartridge bearing headset, or am I mistaken? If you have ball bearings of a non-cartridge bearing headset running directly onto the integrated carbon race that is really bad.

I think that this Ritchey WCS headset (in 1 1/8" variety) is compatible:

https://ritcheylogic.com/bike/headsets/ ... ss-headset

WCS External Cup EC Threadless Headset
33055337005

To be certain about using it without the crown race on a fork with carbon integrated race I would ask for confirmation from Ritchey tech support.

The other 1 1/8" Ritchey EC headsets all have this following information at the bottom of the specs : 'Incompatible with Ritchey WCS Carbon forks with integrated 45° crown race'.

The WCS headset doesn't have this incompatibility notice, which implies that it should be compatible.

Meanwhile I've also reached this conclusion. As you have guessed, the bike only has the very basic EC cups with ball cages. I didn't ride it tho! In fact already reverted back to the old fork.

What I don't understand is why most Ritchey EC threadless headsets are incompatible with the fork. What else is there apart from 34/30 lower part + 45º bearing cartridge?

thinking about it, even if the headset is a loose ball type, it should be possible to modify the crown race (eg. using the SG method) and make it work. A suitable modification might be the addition of a 45 deg. chamfer.

This is a very interesting approach! Perhaps I will try to source a proper headset and see how it turns out, but the spacer idea is not bad at all.

[gregoryoftours]

I'm guessing that there is a slight clearance issue with their other headsets, maybe that the cartridge bearing sits slightly recessed in the lower cup so would bind on an integrated crown race, the outer edge of which is a larger diameter than the crown race included with the headset.

Quite a lot of integrated cartridge headsets are quite finicky with the frames that they fit, height clearance etc and require shims to rectify binding issues, or are straight up not compatible even though theoretically as they are the correct standard they should be ok.

In this case we are talking EC headset, but with a fork that these days would most often be used with a frame that takes integrated headset bearings, I can imagine that some similar issues could carry over.