This weekend I installed an Avocet Mod. III sealed roller bearing headset in my Jim Redcay "Project Avocet" bike.
What a nice headset this is. It makes the venerable Chris King seem less than robust (which the King is not). Made in Italy and not very common at all..
Installation was a bit interesting. For starters the Edco I was taking off was the smoothest and most correct feeling headset I had ever encountered so I hated to rip it apart for the Project Avocet silliness. The Edco most be the best traditional ball and cone headset ever. Let alone on a perfectly machined frame. I think the Edco will go the McLean.
The Edco removed, now to install the Avocet. What- no fork race? That's right. The Avocet lower cup unit has to be pressed on both the fork and the lower head lug. Very tricky and requiring some judicious banging on the bottom of the fork crown with suitable padding unless you have some mighty fancy tooling. After a little bit of that I could use the steerer to draw it up the rest of the way. I had some concern about the stack height but it worked out right in the end.
The end result is a very nice feeling bearing, a little stiffer than the Edco, but that goes with the preload on the roller bearings. Just an aside, taper roller bearing headsets, either sealed like this one or loose like a Stronglight or Galli(are they loose?) should only be use on bikes with dead on headset machining. The alignment requirements are much more demanding than cup and cone headsets using ball bearings.
Joe Bender-Zanoni
Great Notch, NJ