Stronglight A9?

[boblo]

Is the Stronglight A9 still the dogs danglies as far as 1" threaded headsets goes or has it been usurped by a younger cousin? Anything with 'King' in the name need not apply. Too rich for the bike this is intended for.

[Brucey]

what stack height and crown race diameter do you need? Does it have to be well sealed (no mudguards)? Is weight important? What cost is acceptable? What fork/head tube length is it going on?

cheers

[gaz]

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[boblo]

what stack height and crown race diameter do you need? Does it have to be well sealed (no mudguards)? Is weight important? What cost is acceptable? What fork/head tube length is it going on?

cheers

Stack height? I dunno, how do I find that? Race diameter? It's a 1988 Marin Pine Mountain with the rigid forks it came with. Whatever they are/were...Well sealed? Yes. Weight? Not anti matter but definitely not Ti! Cost? @<£30.

Ta

[Brucey]

the stack height is important; around 1988 your bike might have come with a shimano headset with a very low stack height and this now a difficult thing to replace.

The stack height is the difference in the lengths of the steerer tube and the head tube.

You also need to know the crown race seating diameter. From memory it'll either be 26.4mm or 27.0mm. You may be able to find this out by searching the interweb, which will spare you having to measure it.

cheers

[boblo]

Ah OK. Ta. I'll have it apart at the weekend to see what's going on site a bit self centreing at the moment. Hopefully just adjustment but I suspect not.

[gregoryoftours]

There are Stronglight A9s
http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/stronglight- ... prod28371/

And there are Stronglight A9s
http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php ... b2s115p489

The black steel ones are cheap, have cheap caged bearings, no seals to speak of and are quite frankly absolute crap. I speak from personal experience. The silver alloy ones are expensive, have sealed cartridge bearings and look decent, although I haven't bought one myself.
They really shouldn't be allowed to share the same name.

[boblo]

I read they went over to balls from caged roller. The one I was looking at is ally and claimed to be caged roller for about £20. I'll have another shufty once I've had a good look at the weekend. I'm gonna miss straight ahead auto pilot though

[Brucey]

Ah OK. Ta. I'll have it apart at the weekend to see what's going on site a bit self centreing at the moment. Hopefully just adjustment but I suspect not.

If you have balls in clips at present a simple fix is usually to fit loose balls instead; more balls, much better, and usually cures self centring for ever (if you don't adjust the bearings in a ham fisted way; none of this 'take the play out and then tighten the locknut' nonsense please ).

BTW people get excited about old stronglight A9 headsets but I have to be honest and say that I never really rated them. I never had a bike with one that steered especially well and furthermore on any bike without mudguards they had the life expectancy of a mayfly; no seals, plenty of stuff inside to go rusty.

One thing they did have going for them I suppose was that if you didn't know how to adjust a normal headset and always applied too much preload, you mightn't break one as quickly as you would a ball bearing headset.

I've owned several of these headsets and others have given me ones to look at and they all show the same thing which is wear patterns that show that the lower race sits skewed at least some of the time, presumably because of the thrust loads during braking. Often you can build up one of these headsets and get it to run reasonably freely in the workstand, but on a test ride, after a couple of goes on the brakes the thing is usually binding somewhat.

The modern A9s are A9s in name only, nothing like the old ones, which many people assume makes them worse. Call me a grumpy old man if you like, but I think they might be better.

cheers

[Keezx]

Is the Stronglight A9 still the dogs danglies as far as 1" threaded headsets goes or has it been usurped by a younger cousin? Anything with 'King' in the name need not apply. Too rich for the bike this is intended for.

FSA Orbit X is as good as King and costs 1/5.....

[robc02]

people get excited about old stronglight A9 headsets but I have to be honest and say that I never really rated them. I never had a bike with one that steered especially well and furthermore on any bike without mudguards they had the life expectancy of a mayfly; no seals, plenty of stuff inside to go rusty.

That's my experience too. "Sticky" steering and short life.....wouldn't touch another one. I've now got a Tange Levin on my threaded steerer commuter and am very pleased with it.

[gregoryoftours]

FSA Orbit X is as good as King and costs 1/5.....

Isn't that headset threadless only though?
As far as I understand it the modern silver alloy A9s run on sealed cartridge bearings (ball bearing type, not roller).
It seems a bit over the top, but next time I get a 1" threaded headset I will try and speak to someone on the phone as I've been sold 2 or three now advertised as ISO standard that were actually JIS, including the nice fsa durons from planet x. Quite often you will find 1" threaded headsets for sale online where the standard is not in the description at all.