Just treated myself to a nice new Reba 120mm fork for my small Soul, and I’m hovering over it with some pipe cutters.
While I don’t particularly like having too many spacers above the stem, if I want to leave myself the option of transferring it later to another frame later, or even selling it on, what kind of length should I leave?

Steerers under 200mm tend to affect resale

If you’re on a small, I’d suggest not bothering about resale until it happens. Cut to what you need and maybe there will or maybe there won’t be a buyer when/if the time comes.

Leaving 200mm on a small will look daft and could give you a right nasty poke in the nuts or ribs during an off.

Bit like house buying. Are you buying it as a home to leave in or an “investment”? I suggest your forks are for living in.

Cheers – was starting to come to that conclusion, as I’m not sure I can live with 200mm left on it.

I usually measure up what I need based on headtube length, stack height, stem & +30mm for spacers above and below.
Remember its better to leave it longer as you can always cut it 10mm shorter later – you cant add 10mm back on once its done.

Bar height is a preference and stem height depends on bars.

On my five I have a 10mm spacer above and below my stem.
The stem is a 75mm +6 degree stem which is turned upside down so my bar height is actually 2mm lower than it would be with stem the right way up and slammed with no spacers.

This way I get to keep an extra 20mm of steerer incase I swop bikes or sell it.
Here’s a handy stem calculator.
http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/stem.php

I used to subscribe to 200mm myself, but recently have revised down due to shorter head tubes and lower stack heights . The other points are all good too, do you own the fork for your pleasure or for the protection of an investment? I say make it fit, enjoy it and forget about resale.

Same fork on a medium Soul here. 20mm spacers beneath stem and 10mm above works for me. I had planned 5mm above but 10 sits better

Naturally, I’m going to be playing around with spacers etc to start with. Currently It’s got a 100mm fork with a 200mm steerer on it, a 65mm 6 degree rise stem which gives about 20mm of spacers under the stem and 30 above, but that does look a bit odd.

I guess the question was whether I’m going to make the fork potentially unusable on many other frames if I cut to 190 or so.

30 above is a lot and a bit of a hazard in an off. I’d suggest 20 beneath and 10 above

Thanks all. I’ve put up with the 30mm above because the current fork is going back onto another bike with a longer headtube.

Ah, all these people raving on about how a soul is perfect with forks at 120, all have 20mm of spacers below?! Explains why I’ve always enjoyed mine with 140mm forks!

As said above I would have no more than 10mm of spacers above the stem.
Enjoy .

Explains why I’ve always enjoyed mine with 140mm forks!

Aye, but you cannae ride up hills 😛

Aye, but you cannae ride up hills

And you cannae do drop offs without trying to eat the trail!….. 😯

Aye, fair point 😆

I have a 185mm steerer length on my small Soul,

as mentioned earlier, forget about resale

Vortex +1

205mm on my medium but decided to cut it again to leave 15mm below and 5mm above. The Soul is a bugger if you want to run your forks on another bike with a longer HT…otherwise its perfect. 🙂