Cane Creek Hellbender 70 Headset IS42/28.6 IS52/40: Rider Review

Our "Rider Review" article series features honest reviews from verified purchasers of Worldwide Cyclery. They contain the photos, thoughts, feedback & overall review you are looking for.

Many components on an average bike but especially a mountain bike take a beating. Headsets are one of them. The bearings are not only subjected to forces but also the elements. Our friend John gives us the rundown on the Cane Creek Hellbender 70 headset. Check it out!

Overview

I have owned my YT Industries Jeffsy for a year now and finally determined it would be a good idea to take everything apart to inspect and clean all the bearings and pivot points. I started at the headset and was shocked at how quickly my lower Acros IS bearing had worn. The inner race was spinning but it was super gritty and harsh – I tried taking the seals off to clean and re-grease it, but when I did I soon realized that the seals were the only thing holding the bearing together as the whole thing fell apart. That’s when I hopped on WWC’s website to see what they had to offer… I knew I wanted something high quality, with good seals to keep water and dust out, and with a low stack height – Cane Creek was clearly the best choice.

I was debating between the Cane Creek Hellbender 70 headset series and the Slam Set series as they both seemed to have great reviews and had everything I wanted. I settled on the Hellbender 70 headset after looking into the details of both of them thoroughly. Once it arrived in the mail I put it on Jeffsy and was really impressed with the quality – my only issue with it was that the already short stack height wasn’t quite low enough to fit my kid’s Mac-Ride spacer underneath the stem… I called Cane Creek and asked if I could buy just the top dust cover from their Slam Set headset since both the Hellbender 70 and the Slam Set series use the same Hellbender bearings. Cane Creek was super helpful and sent me an upper dust cover which allowed for the perfect spacing to fit the Mac Ride collar and my short 35mm Stem. The job is done!

As I worked my way around the rest of the bike inspecting all the bearings, I came to the bottom bracket and oh man, was it due to being replaced. Back to WWC… There were only a couple of options for replacement BBs on my bike so I pretty much just went with the same setup as came stocked on my bike which happened to be the Race Face Cinch BB92. I don’t have a bearing press at home so I had to go show some support at my local bike shop and they installed the new PF BB for me. I was a little concerned about replacing the BB with the same model that went bad after just a year of use, but I promise not to spray high-pressure water at this one to clean off the grime. Fingers crossed it has a longer, better life than the last one. ;-)

Final Thoughts

So far the new bearings are working well and I couldn’t be happier with my purchase from WWC.