On Dec 10, 11:07 am, William <tapebu...@gmail.com> wrote: > With all due respect, this > needle bearing headset thing, especially, strikes me as voodoo.
It may be voodoo, but so far, it's worked in 100% of the cases we've tried. Mark's Ti Cycles shimmied terribly once he added a handlebar bag, as soon as he took his hands off the bars. With a needle bearing headset, it only shimmied at 24-26 mph when pedaling at 90-110 rpm no- hands. His Goodrich shimmied less, but still annoyingly so at speeds of 18-22 mph no-hands. It doesn't any longer with a needle bearing headset. After we published this, a reader also changed their headset, and also got rid of their shimmy. Furthermore, we've never had a test bike with a needle bearing headset that had significant shimmy issues, and we've also never had a 650B low-trail front-loading test bike with a ball-bearing headset that did NOT have shimmy. It seems that Chris King headsets, for all their other virtues, are more likely to shimmy. Furthermore, several people, including myself, have experienced shimmy with loose headsets, which went away when the headset was tightened. So clearly, headsets CAN be a component that allows shimmy to develop or conversely, attenuates it. So all I am reporting is a trend, and a hypothesis why this may work. It may be just chance, and on your bike, it may not work, nor on the next 20 bikes we test, and it may turn out a blind alley after all. But it's worth a try, as it's inexpensive and easy to do, with no downsides at all. Jan Heine Editor Seattle WA 98121 http://www.bikequarterly.com Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
