Tapered steerers vs straight 1 1/8"

Marketing hype, or can you really, really tell the difference ?
Seem to be a lot of tapered steerer forks on Fleabay at the mo…… 🙄

Well you buy what ever fits your frame.
top tip – don’t upgrade to tapered forks unless you have a tapered head tube – you will only be disappointed 😉

You’ll certainly notice the difference if you try and put tapered forks in a straight head tube frame…

I’ve just gone from straight 1? Lyriks to tapered Pikes and there is a very noticeable difference in fore and aft stiffness, especially under braking. A lot less twang on the Pikes!

Is a tapered head tube meant to be about feel or strength? (serious question)

I would’ve assumed that it was done purely to create more surface area where the two tubes join therefore giving greater contact strength.

Also as the lower cup has a larger diameter it means fork crowns / steerer tubes can be made to a larger diameter and again reduce stress at the interface and enable a greater safety element to be built into forks, which in turn would be the only difference in ride feeling.

Doesn’t matter what you think, 1 1/8s are on the way out anyway. Bike manufacturers can’t be doing with you having an old frame now, can they.

Shirley a tapered steerer does **** all if the upper/lower legs flex for and aft- like MOST single crown forks do to a degree. Plus if Pikes are 15mm – surely its daft as they’ll still flex more over a 20mm bolt through?

Why spec a taper with 15mm? I’m being cynical but is the decision about being ‘up to date/the latest’ combined rather than mixing ‘old’ with new to get the best? Cynical but..

If you have the choice, bear in mind that using a 1? steerer with a zero stack lower headset cup will – all else being equal – give you a slightly lower front end than an equivalent fork with a tapered steerer and an external cup. Which may or may not be a factor for you.

20mm verses 15mm axle, if you actually try it you’ll find that there’s no real world riding difference!

I’ve just gone from straight 1? Lyriks to tapered Pikes and there is a very noticeable difference in fore and aft stiffness, especially under braking. A lot less twang on the Pikes!

but that is two different forks so there is probably other things at play here. Especially if the Pikes are new and the lyriks old.

I think it is a case of lots of small benefits to the tapered steerer:

Steerer can be stiffer for the same weight or just as stiff for less weight.
Steerer to crown interface is bigger so stiffer.
Frame is built up bigger so is stiffer.
Larger bottom bearing so potentially stiffer and more robust.

Plus if Pikes are 15mm – surely its daft as they’ll still flex more over a 20mm bolt through?

I’ve ridden 20mm revs that flex more than the 15mm 34’s I have now. I’s about the entire package not just one number.
People are not selling tapered steerers because they are crap, they are selling them as they represent a huge amount of current forks sold.

Shirley a tapered steerer does **** all if the upper/lower legs flex for and aft- like MOST single crown forks do to a degree. Plus if Pikes are 15mm – surely its daft as they’ll still flex more over a 20mm bolt through?

I had a metallurgical engineer sat in my kitchen a couple of months back explaining in excruciating detail why a tapered steerer does make a significant difference to stiffness and ride feel – it’s all about leverage, from memory. If you think about a fork, it’s a lever, right, so any lack of stiffness at that point has a disproportionate impact on the overall feel of the fork. If it flexes a little bit at the steerer, that translates into a significant movement at the axle. Or something like that.

I’ve never understood why you’d choose a 15mm axle over a 20mm one, but presumably the benefit there is resistance to twisting nor fore and aft movement, so different things. Every single new Pike review I’ve seen has explicitly said they’re decently stiff despite the 15mm axle, so you’d think that the fatter stanchions and carefully engineered lowers are enough to compensate for that and if they were flexy, someone would have picked up on it.

Slight increase in torsional rigidity is what it amounts to.
Also slight reduction in weight as you can make part of the tube thinner – not sure weather the frame would be lighter – looks like a lot of added complexity in head tube design.
Slight increase in headset life – maybe – due to better distribution of weight?
Slight increase in bling factor.

But primarily….. Huge increase in sales.
Everything else is in the noise.

But primarily….. Huge increase in sales.

Doesn’t it just mean they sell about the same number of forks but with different steerers? It’s not like straight steerers can’t be used with frames with oversized headtubes.

But primarily….. Huge increase in sales.

Doesn’t it just mean they sell about the same number of forks but with different steerers? It’s not like straight steerers can’t be used with frames with oversized headtubes.

the only reason is really, it is different.

Have all the changes in BB’s actually achieved anything? in the real world? of course not, they are changes that achieve marginal differences but can be sold as better, as new, as different, same with 29ers. 650b’s etc. Each is more about a new model than about improvement.

Look at the rate of change, at how much models are now changing between years. There was a point not long ago when a new model year was little more than new paint. Now it is getting to the point that not much is remaining constant.

Is it good, is it bad, who knows, just don’t expect to be able to get high quality spares after a few years and its fine.

Doesn’t it just mean they sell about the same number of forks but with different steerers? It’s not like straight steerers can’t be used with frames with oversized headtubes.

looking at it from the wrong angle, you have a good 3 year old frame, you want to upgrade the fork, ie get better than the one you had. You can’t you can get a fork but it will be lower spec. So to keep up with the joneses you need to buy a new frame to go with your new fork…

All marketing bullshit to push us into buying new gear.

If it aint broke don’t fix it 😉

I think that a lot of the frames look better ,1 1/8 just looks too skinny now 😉

looking at it from the wrong angle, you have a good 3 year old frame, you want to upgrade the fork, ie get better than the one you had. You can’t you can get a fork but it will be lower spec. So to keep up with the joneses you need to buy a new frame to go with your new fork…

Oh of course, this is Singletrackmindlessconsumerworld, I forgot where I was for a moment 😉

And hang on, maybe, just maybe, the tapered steerer fork actually is a better product. Don’t get me wrong, I’m properly skeptical of the whole 650b thing, but tapered steerers might actually work. You can’t want upgraded better kit on the one hand and then rage when you don’t like the details of the upgrades, can you?

I went from 1 1/8th RS Revs to tapered Floats (both 150mm) and noticed an increase in stiffness. Neither were super stiff but the Revs felt like they had a rubber steerer fitted in comparison.

I went from 1 1/8th RS Revs to tapered Floats (both 150mm) and noticed an increase in stiffness. Neither were super stiff but the Revs felt like they had a rubber steerer fitted in comparison.

but you have changed the fork completely, was the difference the steerer or something else in the construction of the fork? Or was it the old fork had more wear in the bushes?

Plenty of explanations that don’t involve the steerer.

To be clear a tapered steerer should be ‘stiffer’, increased size means the steerer can’t bend in the headtube as much. To try and explain, the top and bottom of the steerer are supported the centre isn’t, the fork bending back loads the unsupported part of the steerer, the steerer then bends.

Doesn’t it just mean they sell about the same number of forks but with different steerers?

Not necessarily – they may well sell more forks full stop

Example

I have 2 bikes which have recently had new frames – one I replaced because of damage and 1 that I replaced for upgrade. Both new frames have tapered headtubes but I’m running 1’1/8 forks from the old bikes.

This is all fine and dandy….. but the frames are all new and shiny and it is a tiny bit bodgy to fit straight steerer forks with the adapters. the forks are fine but the bike doesn’t look quite as clean as it might – the fork crowns ought to be a bit fatter to match the wider headtube at the bottom. Also inner gremlins tell me I may be missing out on the magical properties of tapered steerer tubes that are now possible with my new frames.

Fortunately my will is strong and I have so far resisted temptation; but I cant help feeling that lesser beings may have succumbed already and that my forks may get replaced some time in the future a little bit before their time has truly come.

The big companies know our weaknesses

I’m a heavy rider and I must say I’ve never felt an issue on my Sektors or Marzocchi 55’s before this. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it because I never put any spacers inbetween the headset and the stem and my bars are quite stiff?

Just curious as to how you super-rad riders are doing

If the walls on a 32mm stanchion fork are as thick as the steerer walls and the material is the same, then the two stanchions will be three times as stiff as a 1 1/8″ steerer.

If the wall thickness are equal and materials identical then a 1.5″ steerer will be three times as stiff as a 1 1/8″ steerer. However once the steerer is encased in the headtube then there’s going to be a lot of extra bending (not twisting) stiffness coming from the frame, so you don’t need the steerer tube to be as big all the way up.

Seems that a bigger tapered steerer tube makes good engineering sense even if it does require yet another headset standard (or ten)!

I’m a heavy rider and I must say I’ve never felt an issue on my Sektors or Marzocchi 55’s before this. Am I doing something wrong?

Not wrong as such, but you seem to be a very slow rider with an abundance of anti-rad. Try going faster on some rough trails or hitting some big jumps and you might experience the flexy fork thing (it’s not very pleasant tbh)

Euro- I’ve watched the ‘wag’ when going fast (fore and aft) – but that was mostly on QR forks and slightly older RS Rev 20mm’s etc.

TBH I hate the fast double-track semi-straight line blasts.

I can not notice any difference in stiffness between my current tapered Sektors and my old 1 1/8th Revs from a few years back. From what I’m led to believe the forks are very similar.

I’m with hora on this one. Surely the stanchion flex is where all the movement comes from. Not to mention the front wheel flexing due to the spoke tension (or lack of).
Cynical 2…. 8)

If it’s just stanchions that flex, does that mean fork makers can just use a noodle for the crown/steerer area?

Possibly. Maybe that’s the way mountain bikes will go in the next few years. How about tapered stanchions ?
I just think a lot of this is marketing BS fuelled by the magazines (obviously not ST 😀 )