Talk to me about Hardtail Head Angles…

So I’m looking at possibly buying a new hardtail in the (hopefully) not too distant future.

I currently have a 2013 Cube Aim hardtail with some rather old-fashioned geometry…
Wheel size = 26″
Head angle = 70 degrees
Seat angle =72
Wheelbase = 1068

I’ve noticed that the latest trend is for bikes to become longer and slacker. A bit more enduro??

I’ve looked at the likes of the Commencal Meta HT AM (65, 74, 1201) and the Sonder Transmitter (65, 73, 1183) or even the 2018 Vitus Sentier (66, 73, 1176).

I’m not in a position to test ride any of these bikes, so my question is what differences can I expect to see in the handling? I ride a variety of trails, quite a bit of climbing and (therefore) descending, nothing too ‘downhill’ though.

First time poster. So go easy. Thanks.

Difficult question…
Depends all onto taste and riding style!

Personally, living in a mountain area – steep uphill and downhill:
I tend to look FIRST for fork travel and head angle plus tire width and good brakes…
For hardtail around 130 mm travel fork (miniumum), head angle around 65 degrees, tire width 2.3 inch minimum. Might be a strange recipe but works for me.

XC race bikes – what you call “old fashioned”: maybe the Cube Aim is fun? More “hills” around, less “mountains”? Don’t know the Aim, don’t know the trails you are riding.

Personally like bikes like the

Commencal Meta HT AM

.

Funny enough, recent post:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cube-frame-winter-sale

Not a Cube fan. But this frame sale is quite crazy. Cube hardtail aluminium or carbon frames for little money… but guess the dimensions are all more or less what you call “old fashioned”?

Too much “Enduro” might kill the fun for “trail bike” riding.
Personally like hardtails with a lot of travel – but full suspension bikes with max 140/130 travel…

Mmmmhh
Hope I did’t confuse you..
😉

If you can, you really want to demo a few even if it requires a bit of a drive – they are so different now with anything up to 4.8″ tyres on your fat bikes and 64 degree head angles on your gnar monkeys.

try ’em you might like ’em 🙂

I went from Sanderson Breath (26″, 71*/73*, 317 rims, etc) to Marin with 650b, wider rims, 68*, dropper, low BB…

Oh. My. Word. Does it handle differently. I’m faster, particularly when I sorted tyre pressures down. I do still bang pedals, I over turn corners just by counter steering more. It’s marginally less happy up steep hills, out maybe that is me…

A bigger jump than the ‘old’ Niner I had on ‘old’ geometry imo.

Depends on what you ride, as above if it’s steep tech with lots of roots sub 66 is where you want to start, 66 or a degree or 2 more for general trail duties and 68 or more for basic trail and longer xc rides. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that but it kind of works for me.

Ultimately a 65 degree hardtail bike still climbs pretty well just may not quite efficiently as a 67 degree bike. A mate of mind has a custom built 61 degree hardtail and still climbed 1500m on some days in the alps with no major issues.

My Salsa has a 71degree head angle.It’s great fun to ride.
My Scout had a 66degree head angle.It’s great fun to ride.

Ok, so in theory…
Steeper head angle = better climbing, worse descending.
Slacker head angle = worse climbing, better descending.

Is that about right?

In practice of course, everyone has a different preference and I might as well ask people to tell me what rainbows taste like.

But thanks for the replies. Plenty to think about.
At least I’m lucky enough to have a bike. I’ll just go out and ride that for now.

Steeper head angle = better climbing, worse descending.
Slacker head angle = worse climbing, better descending.

No.

Steeper seat angle = better climbing
Slacker head angle = better descending

The puzzle comes with how things behave on flatter trails – it can be hard to get the front wheel to grip with a very (sub 65 sagged) head angle whilst very steep seat angles aren’t so comfy for seated pedalling unless going uphill.

I found 64/76 static too extreme for my local trails but 65.5/74 static (add 1.5 deg for sag) good.

Get yourself on a 27.5 semi plus (2.6″ tyre) slack(ish) 66 HA with a steep(ish) 73-75 SA modern hardtail and I bet you’ll have a riot AND be able to go up hill. 😀

Add a nice wide set of bars and you’ll be grand.

The Bird Zero AM boost 2018 is worth adding to your list, even slacker and longer at 64.5 HA, 74 SA, 1226 WB.

To compare, my last hardtail was a 2001 vintage claud butler. Geometry didn’t exist in those days* but jump to present day and my ride on a Whyte 905 2017 model a couple of months back had me being very very slow at first but my speed increased massively after a few miles. It was brilliant fun.

The 905 is 66.5 HA, 73 SA, 1178 WB (for a large) so very comparable to the bikes you’re looking at.

*obviously it did, but I paid zero attention to it. A hardtail was a hardtail in those days…

See this old thing, built in 1990 (just the frame obs)
I’ve had it for about 20 years in one form or another & I still have no idea what the angles are on it. It’s still a beauty to ride even with tiny weeny wheels!
Don’t get too hung up about geometry.

Get in touch and we’ll send you a Transmitter to Demo, pretty sure you’ll be shocked at how well it pedals/climbs for a bike with such a slack head angle!!

https://www.alpkit.com/support/stickies/sonder-bike-demo-days

My first sample Transmitter Carbon is still my go to bike for the vast majority of riding i do, I usually run it with 2.8″ Rangers at both ends but do have a set of wheels with more aggressive 2.6’s on for if i’m going somewhere super muddy or for more aggro DH stuff. Also Ran it with a 130mm fork as standard (29er length) and currently with a 27.5″ length 150mm (clearance for 2.8’s but well suited to 2.6″ setup), a spec i hope we’ll be able to offer in the near future.

My first sample Transmitter Carbon is still my go to bike for the vast majority of riding i do, I usually run it with 2.8″ Rangers at both ends but do have a set of wheels with more aggressive 2.6’s on for if i’m going somewhere super muddy or for more aggro DH stuff. Also Ran it with a 130mm fork as standard (29er length) and currently with a 27.5″ length 150mm (clearance for 2.8’s but well suited to 2.6″ setup), a spec i hope we’ll be able to offer in the near future.

@sxneil – not to hijack the thread (and still related to geo) but what effect does the longer (150/27.5) fork have on the HA v the 130mm/29 fork?

and if I wanted to occasionally stick on some 29 wheels for the odd race (because it would have to serve dual purpose), would that wreck the geometry and make it too tottery on a high BB? (that’s if the wheels even fit?!)

Longer travel fork had no noticeable affect on head angle, a 130mm travel 29er fork is the same axle to crown as a 150mm travel 27.5″ fork, obviously you’d run the 150mm fork with a bit more sag but its not enough to make a difference. Biggest change is offset of the fork, 150mm fork is 46mm offset, 130mm is 51mm.

The 46mm offset fork puts a bit more weight on the front wheel, helping in the corners, 51mm fork gives a slightly longer wheelbase aiding stability at speed.

29er wheels with small tyres just squeeze in and will raise the BB 15ish mm, i’ve never tried it myself but going back to a regular 29er after riding a plus bike feels awful and i honestly don’t believe a 29er is faster over rough terrain (after doing a few back to back tests myself). I reckon you’d be better off spending the extra money you’d spend on a second wheelset on a lighter weight plus wheelset (our carbon ones!) and get them setup tubeless with some nice light tyres.

Don’t get too hung up about geometry.

No, do. It’s the most important part of how a bike rides along with your riding postion, which is of course related. And there are so many options available to suit the riding you enjoy, so you might as well get the right option.

Slack angles in the past would be aimed at descending, but these days they are finding ways to make the angles slacker without compromising climbing. But with big wheels, short stems, wide bars and droppers everything is so different that the old ‘rules’ don’t really apply any more, I think.

Where do you ride OP? Some super slack and long hardtails are a bit mleh on flatter trails, they only really start to make sense if you’ve got steep stuff to play on.

Unless you’re really into the whole N+1 thing, having a good all rounder is probs better than something more narrowly defined.

Welcome OP. I would ask, do you like how your current bike rides? If so, are you looking for anew bike just due to new bike itch?

If that is the case, what about an xc 29er HT. Your riding sounds similar to mine and that is what I find works for me. I have a pretty old school angled one and a slightly more modern (slacker) one depending on the ride I’m doing, the mood I’m in etc.

Molgrips +1

An issue you may perceive with slack head angles is flop, the way the steering tends to want to go in the direction of lean. This is an inevitable result of a combination of slackness and trail. The steering feels lighter at low speeds than a steeper xc-style geometry. This can catch you out on slow speed sections (eg technical climbs where you are having to get over roots etc. at very slow speeds). You need to keep a firmer control of the handlebars to stop it happening when you don’t want it to. Which might sound easy, but when you are grunting up a climb at your limit, is a bit of a pain and can make slack bikes feel wandery*. I have got used to it, but it took me a while and I would still prefer something like 68 degrees minimum for tough technical climbs.

*not in the sense of the front wheel rising up, that is a different issue.

Ok, well there’s quite a lot to take in there…

My riding started off as XC, because that’s the bike I have. I scraped up enough money to buy a reasonable second hand bike to return to mountain biking after some considerable time away… but I’ve now started to go a bit more off road and I’m loving it. I cycle to the top of a large hill and then try and find a different way down it.
Oh, and I should probably mention that I now live in Bulgaria, which presents it’s own set of problems/opportunities. It’s a very poor country where many people don’t have the kind of disposable income to be buying the kind of bikes you see in the mags or the web. This also means that trying bikes before you buy is virtually impossible.
I feel that I’ve started waffling now.
Basically, I want a more all-round bike. A full-suspension bike would be great, but too expensive to service etc. So the new 2.8″ tyre hardtails caught my eye. But they are all around the 65* head angle. I just wondered how that translated.
Anyway, thanks all very much for the replies. I have plenty to think about now.

65 deg head angle on a hardtail is nice – it equates to about 67 deg on a full-sus (due to how sag changes things) and that’s neither too slack for flat trails or too steep for gnarly stuff. You’ll get used to it very quickly if coming from a steeper angled bike (and wonder why on earth it’s taken so long for mainstream MTB’s to get like this?!)

get a test ride – on something even if you can;t get on the exact bike you want. Try something slacker.

I don;t have a modern hardtail otherwise i’d offer. Where are you based? i’m sure someone local will let you have a spin on something more modern than your current bike.

Where are you based?

He is in Bulgaria.

https://www.btr-fabrications.com/sixty-one-degree/

@paton, very interesting.

And yes, living in Bulgaria now so very difficult to demo bikes.

The irony is that I lived 5 mins walk from Ladybower reservoir for over a year and never thought to get back on a bike.

Maybe have a look at Ragley hard tails?

See this old thing, built in 1990 (just the frame obs)

Which bit? 😉

@bonobo:

found your bike?

In your original list you had the

Commencal Meta HT AM

– think the frame is 299 bucks right now in winter sale.
But only makes sense if you have old parts to swap over.

Maybe have a look at Calibre Bikes from GoOutdoors. They ship for very, very little money. http://calibrebicycles.com/
Fantastic full suspension deal they have is the BOSSNUT V2 (check the threads, this forum).
Calibre Line 10 is their new hardtail.

No idea if NS BIKES has an dealer in Bulgaria.
Interesting then maybe: http://www.ns-bikes.com/eccentric-djambo,96,pl.html

Halfords UK has great deals right now.
Like the Voodoo Bizango for 0.5 k and the Boardman FS Pro for 1.3 k
But no idea if they ship outside UK.

Cheers!
😉