Originally Posted by
Bob Dopolina
Long time member first time posting in this sub forum. As a caveat I spent all of 1988 doing a self sufficient loaded tour of Europe. It was one of the best times of my life and I often recommend it to anyone traveling to a new place for the first time. The spirit may be the same but equipment choices have certainly changed since then.
Welcome to the touring forum, Bob!
I have a few questions for those running disc brakes. What is the average fork offset on a touring frame?
Fork offset will vary depending on the head tube angle of the bike in question. Most manufacturers tend to design their touring bikes with a very stable, slow handling front-end. Trail is usually in the low to mid 60 mm. In terms of fork offset, however, the popular 26"-wheeled Surly Disc Trucker has a fork with an offset of 45mm (71.5° head angle.) My 26"-wheeled Rodriguez UTB is about the same. Same with the Co-Motion Pangea.
What size discs do you run on the front?
160mm rotors seem to be quite popular. That's what I run.
Would you trust a robust carbon fork for loaded touring? It would have eyelets.
Eyelets (incl. mid-fork eyelets) for fenders and racks are definitely important on a touring fork, but you could attract more interest if you also included mounts for canti/V brakes. If the fork is as robust as you mention for a lowrider front rack with two loaded front panniers, you might be the first one in the market to offer such thing. The difficult part would be gaining the trust of the end-user (esp. tourers) for such purpose. I can't speak for everyone here, but I think most tourers would only feel more comfortable using a CF fork only with small loads of weight, but this might defeat the purpose of getting one.
I ask these question because I am looking at opening some tooling for a very specific fork and I am wondering if it would cross over into touring. Any feedback or even flames would be appreciated.
Bob: Will this fork be for 700c or 26"? I think there are already plenty of 700c carbon forks in the market, but a complete void of 26"/650b carbon forks.
The few ones in the market (like this one) have an axle crown distance of 445mm. These are designed to replace a suspension fork on a mountain bike. Putting one on a bike originally designed for a rigid fork will completely ruin the handling.
I, personally, would be really interested in buying such disc fork. But more importantly for you, I think there would be interest from builders/small manufacturers like those mentioned above for their 26"-wheeled "travel bikes" (singles and tandems) equipped with S&S couplers. In my case, I will not use it for loaded touring, but to make my touring bike a little more versatile. For example, I might tour once or twice a year. The rest of the year it would be great to swap the heavy steel fork on my touring bike to make it a little lighter/nimbler with a CF fork for century rides, gravel-grinding and randonneuring. There is a growing trend in North America in just loading the front-end by using a rando bag on a
mini rack or from a handlebar bag. The nice thing for these events is that one doesn't go anywhere near the weights people put on their touring bikes. As reference, my steel disc touring fork, for example, weighs 3.2 lb. It might be really smart to adjust the fork offset (increase it) to make the bike more nimble for these applications.
You're welcome to PM me if you would like to bounce a few more ideas.