Thinking about slacking the head angle on my Swarf Contour, which is currently at 66.5° (might actually be a bit less as I’m running a 150mm fork instead of 130/140).

What do I need to know/do?

Thinking about the Superstar Slackerizer, which seems decent value. Anything else to consider?

What other effect will it have besides slackening the HA? Any downsides?

Is it straightforward to fit, or is it an LBS job?

I fitted a works components to my flare max , definitely improved it going down and didn’t make it any worse going up . Pedal strikes was something to be aware of but I had some 170 mm cranks on my hard tail and swapped them over , although I think mainly I just thought about my pedal strokes a bit more .

If you can fit a normal headset you’ll be fine with the slack set , the works components one came with good instructions and I put mine in the freezer overnight before fitting it with some wood and a mallet .

When you start riding it you need to alter your position on the bike slightly to make sure you weight the front wheel , nothing major but I found I could stay a bit more central on the bike if that makes sense.

Just make sure you order the correct size for head tube size top and bottom, head tube length and fork steerer type.
If you can fit a standard headset you can fit one of these.

I think the SS and Works Components are pretty much the same.
I have always used Hope top caps with the WC versions as they seal a lot better and keep the water out the top bearing.

Edit
It’ll also steepen your seat tube angle and reduce your reach a little.

We put a -2° in my daughters 150mm 26″ remedy. At the same time i put a 27.5 160mm pike in it for her. It was awesome. The longer fork kept the bb at the same height and it slightly reduced the reach for her too.

We used works components and the quality was great. We also used the freezer overnight and tapped in with wood and mallet.

Amy loved it in Les Gets this summer and pronounced it a success.

I’ve got a 2 degree Works one on an Aeris 120. Almost forgot I had it as it’s needed nothing.
Find it very easy to for using a proper press.
Highly recommended. Unless you’re incredibly sensitive to changes, I’d say definitely go at least 2 degrees (don’t know if there are ones that do more) as I think less will be too subtle.

Don’t forget they’ll reduce your reach so if the frames on the short side it might be an issue. Also if you’ve got internal lower headset it’ll change this to external so will raise your front end up meaning you might need to drop the travel in the forks to compensate. I’d also recommend Works Components.

Cheers.

Am OK with fitting a headset. But presumably, a slackset will need to be lined up/centralised perfectly… how do you do this?

I have external cups already, so stack height should not differ. Roughly how much will it reduce Reach? And can a slightly longer stem be used to compensate?

On the lining up question I used a piece of string tied round the seatpost then run it along the toptube and over the headtube to find the centre.
Mark the top with a sharpie and use a set square to mark the bottom then just line the slots in the cups up with the marks.
Do the cups one at a time not both together.
Pretty straight forward.
Reach wise it’ll depend on what angle you go for and the length of your headtube/ amount of spacers you run but it shouldn’t be a huge amount.

I fitted a Superstar components one to my 2012 On one Scandal to reduce the head angle from 70 degrees to 68, fitting was easy and i was impressed with the quality, the difference is subtle but noticeable and i haven’t found any negatives to it at all. As mentioned above the reach is reduced slightly but as i’m already running a 90mm stem I haven’t felt the need to increase this, just a slight shift of body weight occasionally.

“ Don’t forget they’ll reduce your reach so if the frames on the short side it might be an issue.”

Actually, they hardly change this at all – any loss of reach from the top cup moving backwards is almost exactly cancelled out by the slacker fork causing the frame to rotate forwards, steepening the seat tube, lowering the BB and lengthening the reach.

So a -2 deg headset tends to slacken the head tube by about 1.5 deg, steepen the seat tube by 0.5 deg, lower the BB by about 5mm, and shorten the ETT but not the reach.

Am OK with fitting a headset. But presumably, a slackset will need to be lined up/centralised perfectly… how do you do this?

With a measuring stick, a sharpie, a rubber mallet and a little bit of not being stressed if it’s fractionally off. Most “proper” headset presses can rotate the headset as it starts to fit so the mallet works better.

Superstar’s headset is a direct copy of Works’ one, I always go back to Works if I can just because they developed the things and led the way on it.

I still haven’t ridden a bike tha5 wasn’t improved by a slacker head angle.

I’ve got one ready to go in my Whyte T130 and upping the travel in the fork from 130 to 140mm 🙂