so I hammered in the offset headset to slacken my Reign to 63ish ( 63-63.5) angle (lyrik 170 mm). Just though its worth a shot to see how it would ride with a proper downhill bike headangle + added benefit of making the seatube steeper too for better uphill performance. Has anyone tried similar setup ? I know that Pole cycles enduro bike has 63.5 HA , so maybe next year we will start seeing more bikes with similar angles perhaps..
I am aware that steering will be less responsive though and bb might get too low, but still think its worth a try.
I will update after weekend.

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Dat is gonna be orsumz. Dude.

If you slacken the head tube you will also slacken the seat tube.

Edit. Lol just realised I’m wrong. Ignoore me.

If you slacken the head tube you will also slacken the seat tube.

Depends how you go about it.

edit: looks like you realised now 🙂

I did the same to my Spitfire:

That’s at 64.1 deg because I’d lowered the fork to 150mm. It’s going back up to 160mm at its next service so that’ll give a 63.7 deg head angle (static) but it rides a bit steeper because I’m running similar sag percentages front and back but it’s only 140mm at the rear.

For trail riding when it’s drier I run it in the neutral setting which raises the BB by 6mm and steepens it by half a degree. When it’s properly wet/muddy or I’m doing uplifts I run it in the slack/low setting.

I’ve gone the other way though with my hardtail, from 64.3 deg to 64.9 and the travel from 130 to 140mm. And soon it’ll be at 65.4 deg with 150mm of travel (so about 67 at sag). Just seems to work better on the less gnarly but tight trails when riding them fast.

I have my orbea at 64 deg, initially i found that it was hard to get enough weight over the front wheel on flatter trails, but removing some spacers from under the stem and rotating the bars so that my hands were slightly further forward fixed that issue.

Now it feels fine.

My Grapil has a circa 64-64.5 head angle after I’ve meddled with it. Rides absolutely brilliantly for its purpose. I run it with 785 bars and 35 long stem. Wouldn’t want to ride it mega long distances (it would be fine, but the rest of the build dictates slow spinny uphill riding really) but for what i built it for, predominantly larking around down trails and spinning back up to the top at a steady rate it’s brilliant.

the Grapil head angle gets much slacker when the chain stays snap too, which I suppose is a silver lining?