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Wim » di 16 aug, 2016 23:31
Dit schrijft Chris KIng:
What is an “Integrated” headset?
It is a bicycle frame, fork and bearing system designed to eliminate the humble headset cup. To integrate means to combine and hopefully to simplify. What has been “integrated” by the integrated headset? The bearings now rest inside the frame instead of inside pressed-in cups. All of this trouble and confusion is to remove two 12 gram headset cups from the front of your bicycle. True, an integrated headset can give the bike a nice, smooth looking front end, but the consequences of this change to your bicycle are significant.
Simply put, the performance and lifetime that you expect from your new bicycle will be reduced, most severely in aluminum mountain bikes. All bicycle frames that use integrated headsets will ultimately have substantial performance and reliability problems due to the inherent flaws in this design. The largest flaw is a bearing system that does not positively attach the bearing to the frame, leaving the bearing to “float” resulting in wear and impact damage to the frame.
As an additional complication, each manufacturer seems to be doing their own thing, with no real standardization to date. As a result, there are multiple bearing types and sizes (some of which have been discontinued with no replacement options) and the frame builders and bearing makers are not all working from the same drawings. Lack of standardization is a bad thing for everyone. It means that you may not be able to get replacement headset bearings for your bike, and you will need them.