Invisible cables: Chris King launches the cable-integrated AeroSet 3
The AeroSet 3 brings fully internal cable routing to its classic buttery smooth headset but has limited compatibility
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.
Ridden and reviewed by us back in the fall of 2022, the Chris King AeroSet 3 merges fully internal cable integration with its legendary smooth, durable and serviceable headset.
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.
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.
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Cycling Weekly's North American Editor, Anne-Marije Rook is old school. She holds a degree in journalism and started out as a newspaper reporter — in print! She can even be seen bringing a pen and notepad to the press conference.
Originally from The Netherlands, she grew up a bike commuter and didn't find bike racing until her early twenties when living in Seattle, Washington. Strengthened by the many miles spent darting around Seattle's hilly streets on a steel single speed, Rook's progression in the sport was a quick one. As she competed at the elite level, her journalism career followed, and soon she became a full-time cycling journalist. She's now been a cycling journalist for 11 years.
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