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So, I got a new fork recently. When I tried to fit it to my old caged bearing headset (from 1996), I could not preload the headset without steering going stiff. After flipping the bearings and gaskets to no success, I figured that the problem would be in the old headset that should anyway be replaced. So I got a Cane Creek 40 as a replacement. With the new headset installed, everything seemed to be fine at first, but now I have noticed very little but still noticeable stiffness in steering.
My question: is it possible that this stiffness comes from imperfect cup installation? With visual inspectation the cups seem to be all the way in the headtube, but I guess there could be some tenth of a millimeter somewhere that is not completely in. My other guess would be that the fork needs facing, since the same issue to a higher degree existed with the old fork.