Flexy Front Ends

Hi Guys… interested in people’s thoughts: on flexy front ends, how much flex is OK – good – bad?I have just put together my ‘new to me’ bike a Yeti ASR SLc, with Fox F100s, Bonty X 75mm stem and XXX 31.8 bars, superstar hubs and XC317 rims and its pretty flexy. It did have a Ritchie wcs 4 bolt carbon and that was desperate! I think the bars are pretty good, were on my Cotic and did not notice the flex there, The stem seems preety good has been others and not noticed the flex there. The F100s have been briefly on an On One SS and did not notice much there. Wheels seem to flex a bit but take one off and don’t seem too different to some DT5.1s on Pro !!s … so is it all of these together? could it be the steerer tube? Could it be the frame?!?

I have an On One SS not much flex on that and an old Cannondale, longer stem normal bars – not much flex in that. It does all seem to work well on the ground…but…. Interested to hear people’s thoughts.

Just tighten the QR up a bit more, or get one of them DT QR’s.

Those Superstar hubs – do they have their hollow QRs? I did sums on them – they are as light as ti, but close to as flexy as Ti as well – and that’s not what you want on a suspension fork.

I’m quite sure they’re strong enough, but a solid steel QR would make things a lot better.

Good thoughts Brant, I was thinking about one of The DT QRs, I have one on the back. And maybe a Thompson X4 Stem …

Take up any bearing slack and nip the hell out of the QR. A little spoke tension never hurt either.

is the headtube on the yeti shorter than the inbred?

yep, it is, all the above provides useful stuff, current wondering is ho much do steerers bend? do different spacers make a difference? there seems to be no play in the headset but some movement here affect it?
cheers R

I had this on my new 5 spot with talas forks and olympic dt240 wheelset. I swapped for a dt ex1750 wheelset with rws qrs and its solid now

Hi Firestarter, saw your 5 spot on rims post, very cool! which rims have you ended up on – or what is the equivalent version?

And so is much of the flex down to rims and qrs? It does look like much of it is when putting some pressure on the bars – I have seen a few wheels silver soldered wher the spokes cross, would definately make them more solid but….

Hi cheers. The wheels are dt ex1750 i think they are same as dt 5.1 rims. Not sure where exactly flex came from as i first ran it with stans olympics with dt rev spokes and normal qr. So ive swapped rims spokes and gone bolt thru. Solved it tho. Good luck