Tapered fork 1 1/8 – 1.5 in a straight 1 1/8 Head tube?

Is this for real?

Please provide links to threads showing this or photos of your bikes done.

Can you tell I only just realised this is possible!

Remind me again how you get a 1.5″ tube in a 1 1/8″ Tube?

What lube you using for that?

It’ll work if the straight head tube is 44mm. You basically swap the internal bottom bearing for an external one. In a classic old skool 34mm 1-1/8th head tube it cannot be done

It’ll only work if you’ve a bike with an integrated campy headset e.g. Specialized, you can press in a lower external bearing cup into the head tube which would normally take an integrated bearing and theoretically a tapered fork will fit.

It’ll lift the front end of your bike and the bottom bracket too, there’s a very good chance that it’ll ruin the handling.

It’ll make the bike a tiny bit slacker. If it is even noticeable I suspect it would be a slight improvement unless it is already very slack.

basically, just what nickjb has said.

44mm headtube – yes

traditional 34mm headtube – nope

You could do it if the steer tube was really long and you left the tapered bit of the steerer remain outside the bottom of the headtube, the bike would be a lot slacker though and would look pretty comical :-)

basically, just what nickjb has said.

44mm headtube – yes

traditional 34mm headtube – nope

THis

You could do it if the steer tube was really long and you left the tapered bit of the steerer remain outside the bottom of the headtube, the bike would be a lot slacker though and would look pretty comical

And er yeah, you could… Might lead to quite “snappy” handling though as well as the comedy look :)

How thick is the metal in a steerer? Maybe you could file it down a bit..

Don’t have a photo to hand but done it… 44mm head tube on the kids bike with the Hope external.  hope adds 12mm, Canecreek do one which adds 10mm

Depending on the fork you need different clearance/length.

For RS forks the aluminium ones are a longer taper than the carbon.  The aluminium worked for us…  its a YMMV

Fox have a slightly sharper taper than aluminium rockshox…

I’ve done it on a 2010/2011 ish Boardman.
I tend to be used to more old skool XC type frames.

For me the change in angles had a large negative effect on the bike going up hill and trying to maintain speed.

The extra travel was nice downhill.

Im not sure I’d recommenced it unless you either plan to change frame soon after, or you feel the front is much too low.

For me the change in angles had a large negative effect on the bike going up hill and trying to maintain speed.

The extra travel was nice downhill.

Well, it will lift the nose up if you up the travel AND put a 10-12mm longer lower headset cup in…

But the 10-12mm alone will make little difference – about half a degree, or the same as running a bit less sag.