Made the stupid mistake of demoing some whytes over the weekend and liked their long geometry. In reality my bandit with 150 pike on it is a great bike.

I know you can get an angle adjust headset and taking a 0.5 degree off the head angle would be good (reduces the reach a little though? I know you can get a reach adjust headset that might add up to 7mm to the reach.

Is there a combination of the two you can get that would add a tiny bit of reach and a tiny slackerising action?

Tapered steerer, tapered headtube

I’m probably just being ignorant but thanks!

slackerising headset = moves stem closer to the saddle, therefore shorter reach

to increase reach, substitute a longer stem…

Yeah I know that but I like having a short stem!

buy a bike with a longer reach and a slacker head angle then 🙂

how much shorter will a 0.5 deg headset actually make your reach?

Remember that when you slacken the forks the front end will drop which makes the reach longer. That is assuming you can remove enough spacers to make up for the external top cup if you didn’t have one before.

I am not sure I would bother with 0.5 deg. Go the full 2 deg or go home 😉

2 deg will actually be about 1.5 deg and IIRC about 5-8mm lower BB and a slightly steeper seat tube.

If you have the space on your saddle rails then whack it back a bit to get more length, you wont get the benefit of a steeper head tube but will get more reach. Other little things like slightly adjust your bar rotation to take out some back sweep, longer stem etc can be used. Although when I added a 2 deg angleset I went even shorter to get the steering response back up. Running longer than 50mm feels odd to me now!

I’d wang a 2 degree one in there. I have one in my Transition Patrol and I can’t see why you’d want it steeper. The reach change is minimal.

i’d love a new bike – the jeffsy 27 looks ace but I suspect I might be too dead to ride it once my OH found out!

the frame is 67.5 at 150mm so I was figuring that taking it down to 67 or 66.5 still keeps it fairly useable up and along.

The other option would be offset bushings and a reach extender I guess although that’s going to drop the bb and its already fairly low. Anyone had experience of them?

angleset will also drop the BB.

Offset bushings will lower your BB. I had them in my Commencal and they made a small difference, they’re certainly worth a go for the cost. I suspect the Bandit has a higher BB than the current crop of enduro bikes so it’d work.

As for slackness and climbing my Patrol has a head angle now of around 63 degrees, steepening to 65 when I reduce the fork travel for climbing and it still climbs well. If it concerns you I’d slam your seat as far forward on the rails as you can to effectively steepen the seat angle and improve climbing.