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What length of steerer do bikes mostly take these days?
Was wanting to add a new fork to my old hardtail which will take 185mm but would this make it too short to use on any future (purely fictional) bike?
This really is a 'how long's a piece of string' question...
The length of the head tube, the length of the fork and how you like your bikes set up (eg bar/stem height) are all key considerations.
FWIW, I'm tall, hence ride bikes that have relatively long head tubes, and I've had a fork with a 185mm steerer but it was 120mm (eg relatively long) travel and I had to use a stem with very low stack height to be able to fit it all together. If you ride a 14" frame, it'll probably be fine, if you ride big frames and the fork is short travel it may well not be long enough.
possibly - my HT has a head tube length of about 120mm, then a headset stack height of 35mm, then a stem height of say 35mm - thats 190mm - so would probably be too short for my bike. If you are shorter than average maybe OK as the headtube length of a frame will be shorter or if it has an inegrated/semi-integrated headset then will get away with it more maybe?
works for me ob ROck lobster and an Intense but as above and neither has any spacers on it