I've never put an aheadset together before, and I wasn't really aided by having an extra part in amongst the washers and bearings. Also, as soon as I popped the bearings from the cups, quite a few of them broke loose and rolled into the gaps between the floorboards in my kitchen.
Dang. Next morning the extra part turned out to be the crown race that had come off the forks of the original bike (of course! - thanks Steve). Which meant a trip to London Bike Kitchen to borrow a stand and some tools to knock the old one off. Once they'd explained how to put the stand up properly, this was pretty easy. I'd already visited two Halfords by this point to look for the appropriate bearings with not much luck. Fortunately I found them in Cyclelab just down the road, home to a nice bloke in the workshop who sorted me out. Obviously once I got home with the forks, which now snuggly fit into the correctly assembled aheadset I realised I needed another spacer to get the stem tight. I ended up popping over to Hub Velo in Clapton, giving me a total of five bike shop visits just to get to this point;
Still at least it was a nice sunny day.
Not to be deterred, I pushed on and pumped the tyres...
and got bars, grips and levers attached for good measure.
