To get the fork off of there, you have to remove the top cap. If I want the fork to be able to drop off because I am going to go ahead and I am just going to remove the left arm with a cane lever, bolt back on there. Then I am just going to leave this to hang so that then the fork can come out of there freely and I remove the stem bolts.
Sometimes especially with the early threadless headsets, you had this happen where the fork didn't actually just fall out, you couldn't just pull the fork out because you tightening that wedge up in there so you kind of had to tap it up and then now you see how that wedge is free and now the whole thing will come apart. This is a loose ball bearing headset and you have an upper cup, a lower cup and a top cone. Sometimes, this top piece would actually be a cone in which case, this bearing would then be flipped over this way and then the upper separate piece could be a cup like that that would fit over.
Now all we have to do is clean these bearings up and so now we take our bearings and slosh around in there in this biodegradable chain bright solvent, perfectly good for this purpose. And what I would usually do with these is even wash them in the sink with soap and water and you can brush in here with a brush and get the gunk out of those. Super clean everything with a clean rag. Now we have got everything super cleaned, then take your clean finger and stick it around clean grease and put it in the clean cup and you want to make sure that you orient this properly because one way it will work, in one it won't.
So this is top cone here, it's going to go on there, of course it wants to go that way in that cup and always double check the way the bearings are going to run. Then on the fourth crown race, similarly this is a cone, so if you put it this way, it wouldn't turn and if you put the headset together that way, it would just tear the bearing rotating apart. So it needs to go that way and you slide the fork in place and put this centering piece on and only this have one spacer below, there you have that. I am going to put that spacer on top because the top cap would obviously bind on that and it wouldn't be able to push the stem down, so you need the spacer there, top cap comes on and you tighten that on there, straighten out your stem.
Again, you want to put your wheel in and line this up with a wheel and then you check your headset adjustment when the wheel is in there, you make sure -- put brake the on and check and see if it's jiggling. Once that's done then you tighten these bolts up. And I also wanted to show you a cartridge bearing headset where the cartridge is separate from the headset cups, that's what that cartridge bearings looks like. So sometimes, they are this way. Sometimes they are pressed into the cap and you can't remove them, that's how.
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