Intend Blackline Stiffmaster Headset Top Assembly

You want a stiff cockpit, right? Railing turns, big sprinting efforts or smashing through rock gardens, you want that stiff and responsive cockpit to maximise control and power. It's not enough to run a super stiff handlebar, and you still want your bars to dampen vibration to minimise fatigue.

Intend-Blackline has the answer, in the Stiffmaster Headset.

Designed to increase the stiffness of your fork's lightweight aluminium steerer tube at the point it makes contact with your upper headset, the Stiffmaster Headset Top Assembly is said to increase the stiffness of your steerer by up to 40%.

The Stiffmaster replaces your entire upper headset assembly with a unified head-tube cup, headset bearing, steerer sleeve and 'dust-cap' assembly, replacing your separate and movable bearing and compression ring with an elongated sleeve and clamping 'dust-cap'. This increases the contact your headset has with your steerer tube from around 3-6mm up to around 22mm, adding stiffness to your steerer tube where you need it the most.

The Intend Blackline Stiffmaster will press into any 44mm internal diameter headtube. These are the types found on most Mountain Bikes that use 'Zero-Stack' headsets, making the Stiffmaster compatible with the majority of bike-shop quality tapered mountain bike headtubes/forks. The Stiffmaster fits over all 1 1/8" straight and 1 1/2" to 1 1/8" tapered fork steerers (28.6mm dia) and works with the rest of your standard headset spacers and stem, although it does have a stack height (distance above the headtube) of 14mm so you may have to remove a spacer.

Setup is simple and you treat the Stiffmaster the same as your stem when you're setting up your headset pre-load. With the Stiffmaster dust-cap clamp and stem steerer clamp bolts loose, tighten down your top cap ensuring there is a 2-3mm gap between the top of your steerer tube and your headset top cap, align your bars and then torque the stem bolts and Stiffmaster dust-cap clamp bolt. Job done.