BB bike

Hello all! Getting back into cycling after a long hiatus. Bought a Specialized Sirrus 1.0 used this weekend. Not the greatest bike but may be fine for now. Steering felt a bit off. Disassembled, measured bearings for order, appears to be an Integrated head tube. Bearings are 30mm inner diameter and 41.8 outer diameter, for both top and bottom. All the parts "seem" to be present, i.e., pre-load bolt, top cap, spacers, star nut, top-cover assembly. I'm not certain why the top bearing has some sort of black circular beveled piece inserted between the upper bearing and the stem. This piece has a crack, possibly made that way?

1) Any recommendations for a preferred brand of bearings?
2) I'd like to be sure all the parts for the headset are present, but unable to find an exploded view or parts diagram on this bike anywhere.
3) I'd love to change this stem for more height, and possibly the handlebars too. Goal is to get more upright. If anyone has advice or has done this on a similar bike, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
4) Might as well ask for advice on a better seat too, the stock seat on it feels too narrow for my build.

Go easy on me, it's been a while lol.

Andrew R Stewart 

I assume your headset is a threadless type.

Many threadless headsets use a ring that fits inside the upper bearing and over the steerer to locate and center that bearing WRT the steerer. This ring has cylindrical inner to fit on the steerer and a beveled OD to fit the bearing's ID bevel. The ring has a slot cut in it so it can contract about the steerer as it is pressed on by the stem/spacers and top cap. We usually call this ring the "compression ring". Note that the bevel needs to match up with the bearing bevel's angle.

If you could take a photo of the parts you have, laid out in the order you removed them in, we could comment on whether all look to be present. Post the photo on a sharing site, give us that link and one of us could repost them here. (This forum restricts photo posting until a person has had 10 posts first to reduce spamming and such).

I would be less concerned about the brand of the bearing than the spec. I would also get a second set for the future. Bearings are not expensive.

Steerer extensions and stems with more upright angles are both available. This mod often requires longer cabling for the brakes and shifters.

I don't suggest buying a seat from a place that you can't first try it out and if it doesn't work for you can simply take it off the bike and hand it back to the shop and try another. And do this after the other fitting mods have been done. Often when fitting a rider with higher bars (by whatever method) we find that the seat needs to be moved more rearward to maintain body/muscle efficiency.

The shop I am at specialized in fitting riders to their bikes and we see this stuff frequently. If you have a shop that does fittings (and not focused to the young athletic body) I would suggest you visit them. Having a number of options at hands reach along with an experienced set of eyes makes this process go far faster and often with only a single session. Andy

BB bike

Thank you so much for the prompt and super detailed response! I took some photos at your suggestion, and created an account on flickr to facilitate the photo sharing. However, it seems the 10 post minimum also applies to link sharing. Guess I'd better get to typing

veganbikes

All you need to do is participate in the forums, super easy. You can get 5 posts a day quite easily around here tons of great threads to get involved with on a lot of different bicycle related topics

In terms of the bike I wouldn't put a ton of money into it and hopefully you got it at a really cheap price. It sounds like you have a compression ring which is a common headset piece wouldn't worry about but I would be curious why the need for new bearings and what happened to the old ones?

Andrew R Stewart 

Replace "@' with "at", "." becomes "dot". Add a space or two to the link... Andy