tapered head tube

jordan7

hi all,
whats the advantage of having a tapered head tube over a normal one and does it really affect performance?
cheers
Jordan

rockmonkeysc

It is stiffer though a lot of that extra stiffness comes from the bigger head tube down tube joint.

Anonymous

Needs tapered steerer forks to benefit of course. Which reminds me to find some for my C456. Currently running old straight steerer Recon forks and thinking about an upgrade on it.

MacAndCheese

I noticed a difference between 20mm maxle and QR forks, but so far can't tell the difference between Headtube diameters, but I'm not that good a railing berms so my opinion may be invalid!

I always thought the larger headtubes were more to do with frame designers wanting to design stronger front ends without having to put in massive gussets and extra weight and the added stiffness was just a bonus.

jairaj

I tried a couple demo bike earlier this year all had either tapered or 1.5inch headtubes. I thought I noticed a difference in fore and aft stiffness.

But this could be down to the frame design and not necessarily just the head tube

bluechair84

Forks are stiff enough that they don't really flex much around the legs - at least, freeride forks don't. Under heavy useage, they actually flex at the steerer junction. There was a video kicking about on here showing it in test conditions but I can't find it. The 1.5 diameter resists this flex much better.
I've heard lots of people suggesting frame designers wanted a bigger welding junction up front, but I've never really seen much evidence to suggest this. I think the initial design requirement would have been to fix fork flex, and stronger front ends was a happy side effect...
If you really hammer your forks you'll likely notice the difference. I've a tapered steerer, but unfortunately 1/8th forks in it so it doesn't help me