budget approach to bicycle headset installation

Installing a new headset isn't something that I'm likely to do more than once every 20 years or so, and the one I installed yesterday is the first one I've ever installed. Park Tools makes some Really Nice Tools for this task, but unless you're running a bike shop or otherwise doing a lot of this type of work, they're way too expensive to buy for just occasional use. What I'm about to describe is my budget approach to the same tasks.
By way of background, a bicycle headset is a collection of bearings and related parts that permit you to steer your bicycle. There are two bearings at the front, one at the top of the fork just before the tube disappears into the frame via the head tube, and one at the top of the head tube below the handlebar and stem. The 1984 Trek 500 came with a Tange MA-60 headset, an economical if somewhat heavy component which is still available in slightly different form today. it uses ball bearings contained in steel cages. like most headsets, the races are the cups (parts which are driven onto the frame & fork using an interference fit), which means that if you do need to replace the races due to wear, you need to replace the entire headset.
The 1984 Trek 510, on the other hand, came with a Stronglight B10 headset. The B10 is no longer made, difficult to find, and used a lot of Delrin plastic. The Stronglight A9, on the other hand, was very similar, but aluminum, and having been discontinued in 2008 is still around in dealer stock (the current A9 from Stronglight is steel and heavier.) The A9 is half the weight of the Tange, and has one other interesting feature: the races are separate, replaceable items; bearings & races for one end run about $5-$7, making it reasonable to buy a couple and squirrel them away. This is what the bearings and races look like before installation:

I got the Stronglight for my birthday; it has "Paramount" labeling, which apparently has to do with the high end Schwinn Paramount of the mid 1980s, which used the Stronglight A9. After I priced the special tools, I started plotting how to avoid buying them.
Driving off the old cups and sets is fairly straightforward. The cups on the head tube can be driven off with a 1' piece of copper water pipe and a hand sledge; once you've removed the front fork and steering tube from the bicycle, just stick the copper tube into the head tube, seat it against the edge of the cup you're trying to drive out, and have at it. switch from side to side so the cup doesn't get crooked and jammed on its way out, then drive the other cup out from the other side.
The seat at the top of the fork can be driven off using a hammer and punch, again switching from side to side. Note that if the cups and seats are aluminum, they probably won't survive this treatment, but the steel Tange cups and seats i took off yesterday are probably reusable.
Now the new parts need to be installed. First, the race at the top of the fork:

This is a 1' piece of 1 1/4" Schedule 40 PVC; the inner diameter fits a 1" ISO headset seat fairly nicely, and the plastic won't damage the aluminum seat. Here's the seat once in place. The white specs are from cutting the PVC, I should have wiped it off before using it. Oh well:

The next problem is to seat the cups in the head tube. Here is the head tube with no cups installed:

Here are the cups to be installed; the one on the left goes at the top, the one on the right goes at the bottom. It's an interference fit; they are slightly oversized, and need to be pressed on:

And here is my solution to the press problem (Park Tools makes a very nice, expensive press). A piece of threaded rod, two nuts, two washers, and a piece of heavy bar stock with a hole drilled in it (on the bottom end, the washer diameter was too close to the cup diameter for my tastes, it could have slipped and caused damage, thus the bar):

And here's the press, set up and ready to set the cups:

And the final result, everything reassembled:

The only thing you really need that can't be gotten for a buck or two at Home Despot is a headset wrench, as without it it's hard to tighten the locknut without screwing up the preload on the headset (bearing tightness needs to be "just right", which is what we mean when we say preload.)