Portland, Oregon-based bearings specialists, Chris King Precision Components, today officially launched its modern take on a classic: the AeroSet headset with internal cable integration.
Available on builds from King’s builder community, like Moots' Vamoots CRD and various Speedvagen designs, the Aeroset 3 aims to deliver a unique serviceability that solves many of the challenges fully internal routing can pose.
Chris King's answer to hiding brake cables consist of a wide, 44mm headset with external cups equipped with King’s built-in-house bearings and patented GripLock® system.
The cables and housing go straight from the levers into the handlebars and stem and down into the headtube between the bearings and the steerer tube before entering the frame's designated routing.
(Image credit: Chris King)
The integration currently relies on Enve's In-Route system with a 44mm straight headtube and a 1-1/8” to 1.5” tapered steerer tube. Chris King is actively seeking more brand partners to create a unified standard for cockpit integration.
"It took us a long time to design and refine the Aeroset," Chris King comments.
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"These things always take longer than you think, even when you’ve spent more than four decades designing headsets. This is the first we designed to make way for cables to pass through...and any time you put holes in a piece of metal, you reduce its strength and fatigue life, so this was enormous engineering challenge."
The end result looks, while beefy, incredibly clean and the cables are indeed, completely out of sight.
Fully serviceable, the headset is built around the brand's heat-treated bearings and surgical-grade steel machined races. Over time, the bearing tracks are meant to age and burnish, to get even smoother.
The AeroSet 3 is engineered, manufactured and assembled in Portland, Oregon; retails for $375 USD; and comes with a lifetime warranty.
(Image credit: Echos Communication)
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