Depending on a riders weight and/or the track design - directional stability can get interesting during turns, standing starts or sprinting as mentioned above. My first year at the DLV I went from 1"->9/8" steel and then again to 9/8" carbon and the difference between them all felt pretty significant. I’m 190 pounds and the turns at the DLV are a little more aggressive than most tracks, but even at Rock Hill it was possible to get some flex in the front end coming down into the sprinter’s lane and during standing starts.
But I’m extrapolating from racing my 1.5" steerer gravel bike as a crit bike, I’d love to have the same front end stiffness at the track.
Dana, pictured, rides a Dolan, which most certainly has a straight 1 1/8" steerer. As do I. They all come with Alpina forks.
I’m not so concerned about weight into the fork, but forces coming from the other side. My supposition is that without road bumps and lateral forces from turning, there is a lot less need for a larger fork steerer.
yes it’ll for sure work on 11speed, I recently went to one of those from a normal aluminum chainring+spider combo because I somehow managed to split a tooth in half with the chain on the old one
the hooked teeth are to increase chain retention, the jury’s kind of out on that, but they do definitely interface with 11sp stuff fine. plus if you get the steel one it’ll last forever
Someone ought to set up identical frames with different combinations of steerer sizes / step down headsets and see if they can be detected blind. I’m guessing it’s not easy IF the headset is adjusted well.
Headsets convert steer tube flex into head tube compression, so any steer tube gets a lot stiffer when it’s in the bike
My feeling is that the move to tapered comes from CPSC crash safety etc in a world where headsets aren’t always tight.
Tapered came from wanting long travel single crown mtb forks that weren’t wet noodles in the stiffness dept. First there was straight 1.5" steer tubes which sucked because proprietary stems. Then Rock Shox or Fox was like, oh, we only need it beefy at the crown so let’s taper the tube and use a regular stem and upper headset.
Old +5" travel single crown forks were wiggly, and not in a good way. They kept getting g heavier and heavier trying to add material to the crown or make the stanctions thicker/wider, making inverted forks, etc to try and fix the problem. Then tapered came out and here we are with stiff 7" travel single crown forks that don’t weigh as much as the moon.
Then like all things bike industry, if it works for x bike it’s got to work for y bike and we have tapered everything.
yeah. the actual track world (the non fixie contingent) is just about the most stubborn when it comes to change… so if there’s no functional improvement, they won’t change. the plus side of this is that you can use the same gear for 20 years.
aero frames are pretty much the only major changes to track equipment in the last 20 years, besides moving to say threadless stems and compact bars being acceptable. wheels have gotten better, but still roughly resemble what they were before as far as trispokes and discs.
same tubular tires. same wheel spacing. same 1/8" drivetrains.
the only ones who tried to really disrupt was those awful felt wacky bars and those faded away quickly, thankfully, as they were frightening wet noodle contraptions.
case in point: the current shimano track cranks are 7710 series.
