CANE CREEK SLAMSET
£49.99 › Want to get down up front?
1 The lowdown
The problem with most headsets on o!-the-shelf bikes is that they’re chosen to hit the middle ground when it comes to bike "t. There’s been a trend for standard "t headsets to come with a cone-shaped top, which can add as much as 25mm to the stack height of your bike. If you want to go lower that means exposing the top bearing to the elements, vastly reducing its lifespan.
2 Slam that stem
Slamming the front end may be more about fashion than "t, but we’ve de"nitely had bikes on which we’ve wanted to drop the stem further than the headset arrangement will allow. Cane Creek’s solution is to upgrade the top bearing and combine the top cover and compression ring into one, massively reducing the height.
3 Millimetres that matter
The 3.8mm of the Slamset sitting on top of your head-tube halves the height of a standard headset. You can even opt for the ZS (zero stack) version that adds just 2mm. That’s not the whole story either, because if you add in the cone spacer there can be as much as a 29mm drop in height.
4 Weight loss
Cane Creek uses its Hellbender bearings, which feature high-grade, rust-proof, stainless steel races and bearings for longevity and smooth running. Compared to the top section the Slamset replaced, it also saved 9.3g, which could be important to weight weenies.
5 Pick and choose
With the Slamset you don’t have to replace the whole headset – you can leave the bottom race as it is (that doesn’t have any e!ect on stack height for integrated headsets) and just replace the top to lower it. This means rather than spending over £100, you can spend just half that.