Steering head bearing.

[Greybeard]

I changed the head bearings on my Plunger for taper bearings. I probably bought them from Draganfly. They fitted fine; I did not need to remove any material on the frame.

Re., removing the old cups: I welded a scrap of bar across the cup and drifted them out.

[Jules]

there's a few threads in here about fitting tapered roller bearings and in most cases I seem to remember that there is an issue of packing out the fork covers to consider because the tapered rollers sit slightly higher....

[Russ]

Swarfy there is no need to enlarge the hole to accommodate the bearing, you simply have to Taper the inner shoulder in the head stem to allow the Inner bearing to protrude further into the tube. The outer cup still sits on the full width of the internal shoulder. Hope that makes sense? I don't think there is any weakening of the head stem.
I learnt this lesson the hard way as I had inserted the outer cups before I knew of this issue. Fortunately I was able to fix the problem with a die grinder without damaging the new cups.

[Slymo]

Never understood the point in changing traditional head race bearings for taper rollers. In my experience they last about the same time. No question taper rollers are easier to set up but its not like you have to do it every day. I put a new traditional cup and cone with crowded row in my SR and haven't thought about it since. I'd certainly balk at mods to the frame to fit taper bearings.