Back in the day when owners came in complaining about notchy steering, common practice at the dealers was to remove and rotate the races in the head/stem housings to negate the 'straight ahead notches' where the balls had hammered the races (This was before taper conversions were available).
Look, water/dirt ingress aside, in the real World the original bearings were subject to plenty of hammering due to blokes coming down hard from wheelies. No wonder they got notched!
Someone should clarify this I think. In Coyote's top pic, parts are in the wrong order.
The plastic dust cover goes on first concave side down, then the big adjuster nut with the shoulder down, so that the dust cover fits 'into' it.
The big adjuster nut is left exposed, as this is how the head bearings are adjusted on the bike.
(Weird, I can't find pics of the bearing/adjuster parts in my parts book. Going blind?)
For the record I converted to AllBalls taper rollers, after measuring things up I found the assembled depth of the taper bearings to be very similar to the original ball bearings.
But I wanted to use one oil seal (supplied with the bearings), at the bottom beneath the lower bearing (grease/gravity!) (I was a bit concerned that using the allballs grease seals would add too much to the assembled distance between the triple clamps for the headlamp supports etc to fit). From memory, I think the Allballs grease seals add about 2.5mm each, total of 5mm.
Assembled and with bearings adjusted gives (me) a measurement of 186mm between the faces of the triple clamps for the headlamp supports etc fit between. I will be able pack the 'cushion and guide' out to get everything to fit nicely.
