Looking for some advice,

I’ve inherited the other half’s tapered forks which are far better than my own (my own are now seizing up). The forks are tapered but my bike is not. Bike shop have said fitting the forks is possible with the hope adapter. But this will raise my front end by 2cm, making the bike slacker and increase the height of my bottom bracket. The bike is a scott contessa spark 2012.

I’m pretty confused about what this will do to the handling. Will raising the front end effectively reduce my reach/top tube length? Reach already feels on the small side but I prefer a short stem.

Anyone else had any experience? The bike started out very xc and now I’m giving it alot more abuse. Other option is to rebuild the bike with the stock parts, sell it and move all my upgrades onto a the mega 2013 tr frame…

Any help/advice much appreciated!

Are you sure it’s a 2012 frame I just looked it up and they had tapered headtubes the 2011 model didn’t. What is the tapered fork and what length? What was the old fork and how much sag did you run?

Cheers Fr0sty125 – it is indeed 2012 and from the outside it looks like it should be tapered. The bike shop confirmed to me it isn’t which is pretty gutting. I double checked the manual – headset is semi integr. with 1 1/8 straight (44.0mm)

The new fork is the fox fit rlc 2012 at 120 travel, old fork is recon gold rl again with 120 travel, tend to run at 20% sag as like it quite firm and the rl tends to blow through travel on the rough stuff.

If it’s a 44mm steerer tube then it will take a tapered fork.

Well ok if is a 44mm straight headtube then you will need and External Cup this will add about 10mm on so if you ran the fox at about 25% you shouldn’t notice any difference. If you run at 20% it will slacken the head angle by about half a degree and raise the BB by about 3-4mm

Reply, cheers scotroutes, that’s what I thought…

Took it to local bike shop and said it wasn’t designed for tapered but could if a mix and match headset but this would change the handling of the bike and this is my concern!

As fr0sty125 says, the difference in handling will be minimal. An external headset doesn’t add 20mm, more like 10mm (possibly less). The axle-to-crown measurement of the two forks should, of course, also be taken into account. That might increase or reduce the overall increase in height.

Cheers for the help guys!

If it helps, the Hope ‘H’ bottom cup has an official stack height (i.e. amount exposed once it’s fitted) of 14mm. I just measured mine and that’s about right, including the crown race.

An external headset doesn’t add 20mm, more like 10mm (possibly less).

If it helps, the Hope ‘H’ bottom cup has an official stack height (i.e. amount exposed once it’s fitted) of 14mm. I just measured mine and that’s about right, including the crown race.

To confirm; both my bikes have 44mm head tubes and Hope headsets. One has internal cup with straight steerer and the other external cup and tapered steerer. The difference in stack height between the two is 10mm.