I thought the whole point was to not be tapered. Because beercan head tubes are dumb? And it’s annoying to face them etc?
Adventures in carbon garage tinkering: http://www.regularcycles.biz/
http://forums.mtbr.com/frame-building/show-tell-monday-milestone-carbon-lugs-909417.html
Also don’t forget your main opponent
The BMC road plus is 60mm offset but I don’t know the A-C. Head angle is 72.
There’s also the Masi Rando, I wonder how big the upgrade market is for that bike alone?
Front loading is definitely going to grow but I think communicating (and calculating) low trail is still a big hurdle. I don’t think the majors want to touch it since it really requires spec’ing a rack and bag to make it all work off of the sales floor. I also wonder how many majors won’t touch it out of fear of liability reasons - can they see themselves sitting in front of a jury having to explain how yes, trail is a measure of stability and yes mathematically the bike we sold has a fraction of the stability of most bikes.
As for the low trail market, it seems a niche within a niche. The lug lickers don’t care. The people who would want 1 1/8 rando bikes are all framebuilders. There’s some hope with Jan’s Firefly getting people inspired.
Maybe it adds up to enough - if the BMC and the Masi have the same-ish A-C and you add in the BendPoint Rubber/Wiggler.
There seems to be a lot of 395-400 options, so maybe there’s a hole to fill at 385? Could you make something more sporty but wide enough to take a RTP? Also could it pick off some of the custom tinybike market?
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another hurdle will be making it not look like a stupid carbon fork from the early 2000s. Just some big black shmoopy bean.
Are you kidding? Those are the best forks! I want a glossy weave finish and tons of random sporty words all over it “maximum power” “flex dynamic”
I’m an army of one when it comes to loving 1996-2001 trash bike aesthetics
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Naw, dog. When you see one set of footprints I’m carrying you. I love those bikes.
Also, great discussion.
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Yes. I think this is the point some folks are missing.
The main purpose of this is to allow framebuilders to use smaller diameter headtubes that are lighter and more aesthetically pleasing when combined with the tube sizes that ride well for most cyclists.
A happy accident is that it could be retrofitted to existing 1 1/8" bikes that have steel or shitty aluminum steerer carbon forks.
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As devout garage tinkerer who strays into “there are so many places can make this stuff better and cheaper than me but fuck it I’ll do it anyways just for fun” territory all the time… I have to admire that guy.
I do know of a composites place in the US who has considerable experience with forks and can do smaller runs with less up front cost but cost per fork would be way higher. Like they’d have to sell for $500-600 and that would be with a stupidly slim margin.
As it sits pricing wise the niner rlt fork is $250-$350 depending on sourcing. It retails for $500. You’d have to be able to compete with that on pricing features and weight. The thing I see most steel frames doing is using the same os downtubes even though they have 44mm headtubes. It looks silly. It would be cool to do 1 1/8 bikes again though. Theres so much less to fuss with then.
The Masi fork I have measured about the same as the Soma fork which is listed as 398 a-c. I don’t know if there’s an upgrade market there. For all the discussion online & in BQ I don’t think they sold very many bikes. JensonUSA had less than 10 for the entire size run when I got mine last Dec/Jan - and that was the only stock they received for the model year.
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this especially coupled with disc, rack, and fender compatibility would make some nice 650b mullets out of existing bikes whose factory forks only cleared 28s with rim brakes and no fenders
Cheese peepin’ my basement!
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Definitely please no banana fork, and no CAD primitive block fork like that Rodeo thing.
Also, I’m curious about the idea of making a low trail fork and not marketing it that way. Would anyone actually notice? People that cared would look for the offset and maybe everyone else would just see a fork.
You would lose the market of custom builders that don’t do low trail, but do make gravel bikes with carbon forks, which is a much larger market than the low trail nerd niche
Yeah attention will be paid to form.
Getting more than one offset into one tool using interchangeable inserts requires a bit of bend to the blade.
I’m gonna shoot for something not unlike this ritchey fork:
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Do you have someone to do the 3D work?
or are you just gonna have the factory’s engineers do it
Right now I have an engineer in on the project. He’s in the industry and experienced with layup, QC and testing. For the 3D I haven’t talked to anyone yet but I know a few guys.
That BMC is 60mm offset and never a mention of low trail.
Something like hybrid between what Columbus is doing to offer two rakes on the same fork and what Norco does with their gravel fork?
Blades sweep forward enough to hit 65-70mm of rake but use a similar dropout shape to allow for a rearward position at 47-50?
And that puts a 72° HTA into a pretty nice spot where it gets a bit more nimble but has enough trail so it doesn’t start wandering after a long day riding your no-rack bicycle. (72° HTA + 47mm tire => 48mm trail, 73.5° HTA + 38mm tire => 36mm)