Originally Posted by mander
Given that adding rake to a fork will decrease trail and therefore cause the bike to steer quicker, why do a lot of bikes with slack head tubes have forks with big swoopy rakes? More generally, instead of using fork rake why not just tighten up the head tube and install a fork with no rake at all? Does offsetting ht angle with increased rake have some desirable side effect?
Dave Moulton has a couple of articles on his blog that may help. One discusses the
HISTORY of fork rake and trail, while the other is about
HEAD TUBE ANGLES AND STEERING.