Soma Wolverine and fork trail

[Edd Bread]

This might be a stupid question... but I'm currently riding a 50cm Soma Wolverine. I looked at the specs and charts and was wondering if I added a fork with increased rake would this effect front loading handling better/stability? For reference here's my current setup; Soma Wolverine 50cm, 650b x 47c, when touring 650b x 54c (Thunder Burts), Tubus Tara, Ortlieb Front Rollers and eventually a medium sized randonneur bag on a front rack. So far it handles pretty good but then again I have fully loaded the front.

I've used the 'bicycle trail calculator': http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/trailcalc.php
In combination with Soma's Geometry chart: http://www.somafab.com/archives/product/wolverine#tabs-2529-0-3
Hobo Cross's 'Bike Fork Trail Chart': http://bikecounterculture.com/index.php/2017/01/21/bike-fork-trail-chart/

According to the Bicycle Trail Calculator I already have a trail of 65mm at 650b x 47c and a trail of 68mm at 650b x 54c. However when if I enter the values of a Hunter Gatherer Fork (fork rake 65mm) I get less trail? The stock Wolverine fork is a mid trail fork at a rake of 50mm.
Has anyone had experience with using a low trail fork on a Wolverine?

[Reed Kennedy]

Well, yeah. You get less trail because the Hunter Gather fork is a low trail fork, designed to provide more rake for the sake of less trail.

Wolverine fork, 50mm of rake = 65mm of trail, which is pretty high trail. That's what Soma intended.

Hunter Gather fork, 65mm of rake = 49mm of trail, which is either at the higher end of low trail or the lower end of medium trail, depending on whom you ask. For comparison, most bikes designed for low trail end up between 30-40mm of trail.

(Both of these with the Wolverine 71° steering angle and 47mm tires.)

I haven't tried this, and am not speaking from experience. That said, I probably wouldn't try this. Low trail bikes generally have a 73° head angle. Pretty steep. Your Wolverine has a 71° head angle, which is quite slack by comparison. You can blaze the trail and be one of the first to try low-ish trail with a slack steering head angle. You'd end up with something of a mutt, geometry that is neither here nor there. It might be wonderful, but it is more likely that you end up with neither the advantages of low trail nor the tried-and-true geometry SOMA intended. 

Best,

Reed

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "650b" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 650b+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to 65...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/650b.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Brad]

Depends what you want to use the bike for.
With a slack head angle you would need 1930's still fork rake to get to a low flop factor/ low trail.
What you have is a mountain bike with high trail which won't work comfortably with a front load.
If you really wanted to use it touring, front low rider panniers properly centered on the steering axis should at least give you neutral steering that you are used to.
Some of the touring specific bikes from the 90's took that approach.
If you are using drop bars the high flop geometry is going to make you lean toward wide bars - 46 cm- 48 cm if you can find them. 
The wide bars counteract the wiggle and the flop by giving you more leverage.
Even so with an all day into the night ride you will feel it in your pecs and triceps the next day unless you are in great shape and even then you might.
There are reasons to avoid bars that wide, but they don't become obvious until you age.
Might not be an issue at all if you maintain say an average speed of 15 mph with a touring load.

[Justin Hughes]

Honestly, it's a low risk experiment. If you like the Wolverine aside from the handling when you have a front load then I'd say it's worth a go. But, as Reed has said, it's a different type of bike. A 71d HTA and 65mm offset isn't going to produce the classic French rando handling. 

I had a 58cm Wolverine and my experience with a front load was that the handling was absolute garbage. Terrible. I too used 650b wheels. 

Justin

 
On Monday, October 23, 2017 at 7:32:17 PM UTC-4, Edd Bread wrote:

[Edd Bread]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

[Edd Bread]

How heavy was your front load? I suppose the reason I ask is because I see a lot of Wolverines with large front loads, eg:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BY4cDjQgZie/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZaRirZn1LX/

I didn't find the front handling off-putting or undesirable although the max I've done was a grocery run with x2 Ortlieb front rollers packed to capacity weighing in about 20kg. That was when steering and handling with 42cm flared drop bars were uncomfortable.

[Edd Bread]

Interesting the Crust Evasion in Small has a 70° head angle and a rake of 45cm. Crust Romanceur has a 72° head angle and a fork rake of 65cm, compared to the Endpoint 73° head angle, how much of a difference is 3° if one were to slap on a low trail fork on a Wolverine? Just playing with ideas, I'm also curious to see what Soma does with this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGFpX9yTUvX/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWio6GrgIlR/

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 650b+uns...@googlegroups.com.

[Edd Bread]

Wow I just punched the numbers:

Endpoint Frame and fork:
Head angle: 72°
Fork offset: 65mm
650b x 47c
= 43mm Trail

vs

Wolverine Frame and Endpoint fork:
Head angle: 71°
Fork offset: 65mm
650b x 47c
= 49mm Trail

On Tuesday, 24 October 2017 11:03:34 UTC+11, Reed Kennedy wrote:

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 650b+uns...@googlegroups.com.

[Reed Kennedy]

Hey Edd,

Not to put too fine a point on it, but 3° of head tube angle is the difference between a mountain bike and a road bike. Or between a beach cruiser and a mountain bike. It's a big difference. 

Like I said, you could try it! It's possible that lower-trail and a slack head angle has never been tried before, and that you'll discover something special. However, is is probably more likely that it has been tried and isn't used because it doesn't work very well. Old bikes used to have much more slack head angles, and I imagine somebody must have tried increasing the rake at some point.

The Wolverine is set up to carry weight on the back. I'd encourage you to use it that way. Or, if you really want to carry your load up front, find an entire fork-and-frame package designed to work together for a front load.

I've personally switched entirely to front-loaded low-trail bikes. I adore them. And right now, they're more available than ever.

Best,

Reed

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 650b+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[David Parsons]

On Monday, October 23, 2017 at 5:03:34 PM UTC-7, Reed Kennedy wrote:

Your Wolverine has a 71° head angle, which is quite slack by comparison. You can blaze the trail and be one of the first to try low-ish trail with a slack steering head angle. 

It will be even more wandery than low trail on a steeper-HTA'd machine.  For a while I had one of the Electra super-high-rake forks on my GT Talera-based fixie, and the low trail tendency of a bicycle starting to wander was turned up to 11;  I did a couple of 200k loops on the thing where when I was doing the last 30 miles of run-in I'd have to keep close attention otherwise the machine would as if by magic suddenly be on the other side of the road.

(The SENSIBLE choice here would have been "don't ride brevets on a fixie", but randonneuring does not select for rationality)

[Edd Bread]

:O

[Justin Hughes]

I'm sure carrying the weight in panniers is better. Better enough to be good? I dunno. There were not enough redeeming qualities about the bike for me to invest time or money trying to figure it out. It took considerable effort and concentration to keep that bike in a straight line with weight on the Haulin Colin rack. 

https://flic.kr/p/J3sW6r

https://flic.kr/p/J3sVNx

Justin

[Daniel Jackson]

I’ll echo here what Reed and Justin and others have said. Trail is not the only determinant of front end weight handling. HTA might be equally as important. I’ve tried very high rake forks on down to 70 HTA frames: front load handling does not attain near the same sweetness afforded by equivalently trailed machines with much steeper angles (72.5 or 73).

I believe that regardless of trail, bikes with such slack angles will fall into turns when weighted up front. This too makes them difficult to keep on a straight tack as the normal lateral front movements of a bikes front end are exaggerated.

[Paul Jackson]

The Romanceur appears to be well liked around these parts, but I haven't heard any specific reports about how well its front end geometry works with a load.  Can any Romanceur riders comment?  

[Brad]

That is why you have to look at the flop factor number as well as the trail number.
You can play with head tube angle a little by changing the tire size in front.
On old school horizontal dropouts like campy's you can push the rear axle forward and move the head tube angle about a half a degree.
I would be kind of curious what would happen if you put a 29'er (700c) x 47 wheel in the back and an 650 b wheel in the front.
That would steepen the head angle a fair bit.

[Edd Bread]

Woah Justin that's a huge front load, what tires are those? I've been curious about Wolverine 2.0 owners (not the 2.1) and pushing those sliding dropouts all the way back, after several people have snapped their frames at the stays. So far I'm a little paranoid and I'm keeping the dropouts pretty forward.

[Edd Bread]

That's some real experimental territory I'm not equipped for.

[Justin Hughes]

They were SBH EL. 

I've since carried as much or more weight with similar bar setup but with a bike with 73d HTA and 66mm rake and the same tires and the handling is miles better even on much worse terrain. But, bike rides don't happen in a vacuum; there are lots of factors at play. 

Justin

On Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 6:28:43 PM UTC-4, Edd Bread wrote:

Woah Justin that's a huge front load, what tires are those? 

[Edd Bread]

Speaking of vacuums,

Is the whole idea behind a low trail fork to enable one to eat a sandwich whilst riding or grabbing things out of a rando bag, both hands off the handlebar?

Shouldn't this be how BQ reviews different bicycles?

Sandwich Factor? 

[David Parsons]

On Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 7:41:27 PM UTC-7, Edd Bread wrote:

Speaking of vacuums,

Is the whole idea behind a low trail fork to enable one to eat a sandwich whilst riding or grabbing things out of a rando bag, both hands off the handlebar?

I try to avoid the low trail wars, but the argument I saw (several years ago) is that it's easier to steer the machine when it's lower trail.   I've found that (once you get away from the pathological extremes) it's just as easy to scrounge nohandedly through a rando bag on a medium trail machine as it is on a low trail machine, but that a heavily loaded medium trail machine REALLY wants to go in a straight line if you're moving at any speed whilst a low trail machine tips over from being wandery to just being easier to steer (my eldest child used to ride a low trail P/R, which he was perfectly happy with, but whenever I'd ride it it would drift aimlessly unless I paid close attention.   He complained about the ride when it was full of books one day, so I shovelled 30 pounds onto the front rack and took it out for a spin and the usual sort of sloppy listlessness that it had had all vanished and it was riding like one of my rando bikes.)

That was a bit of an eye-opener, but not enough for me to pursue low-trailing any machines other than the two that I'd previously modified (super-low trail is a good solution to xtracycle shimmy;  if the front wheel isn't trying to self-center it's a lot harder to drive a long jointed frame into a resonant frequency.)

[satanas]

What sort of sandwich filling is best for eating while riding, and do different fillings work better with different amounts of trail? I don't think I've ever tried to eat a sandwich - or a McObject - while riding; maybe that's an American thing. :-)

And if we have high trails and low trails, which one will get us to Scotland first?

Later,
Stephen

[Bill M.]

Peanut butter, of course, it sticks the bread together to minimize intra-slice shimmy.  It's the roller bearing headset of sandwich fillings.

Bill

Stockton, CA

[Steve Palincsar]

And a liberal application of black raspberry jelly provides necessary anti-seize properties.  PB&J: an American Classic.

-- 
Steve Palincsar
Alexandria, Virginia 
USA

[David Cummings]

>Peanut butter, of course, it sticks the bread together to minimize intra-slice shimmy. It's the roller bearing headset of sandwich fillings.

LMFAO! So true!

David, “PB anti-shimmy & J” in MT

[Stephen Poole]

Maybe I should have tried PBJ in the GR's needle bearing headset instead of grease. Crunchy PB would probably have more friction...

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "650b" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/650b/tZjRSzQYAyk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to 650b+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[James Swan]

Speaking of damping grease, do you guys know that Cane Creek is making a damping headset?

It requires a special grease that is, apparently, very expensive.

Maybe peanut butter would be a good substitute.

The only problem with the headset is that they only make it for 1 1/8” steerer tubes.

A while back I modified a few of them to fit 1”.

That required machining my own cups that would accept the bearing as well as the damper mechanism.

Start here and then click to the right.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/48950170@N03/31166296370/in/dateposted/

Jamie

James B Swan

H: 631-754-1457
C: 516-238-6782
W: 516-403-5945
http://www.jamieswan.net

http://www.limws.org
http://www.liatca.org
http://www.webb.edu

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "650b" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 650b+uns...@googlegroups.com.

[Stephen Poole]

Nice work!  :-)

I'm sure there'd be a market for the cups, but it might be too small to justify Cane Creek making them. If someone had a CNC mill or lathe in their shed it might be worth doing a batch.

I'm going to avoid the whole low trail=shimmy problem by having high trail and a stiffer head tube on the next bike; a needle bearing headset didn't prevent shimmy for me.

Later,

Stephen

Jamie

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 650b+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Steven Frederick]

It very temperature-dependent, though.  P-nut but'r quickly becomes a lubricant at temps much above 70 leading to the dreaded sandwich slide.  At higher temps, I recommend crunchy, the anti-slip compound of the sandwich world.

Steve