Originally Posted by
idiq
If you start altering the rake of the fork your bike, as dutret points out, will definitely "handle like ****." When engineers design a bike, they design a bike with a specific rake in mind and this plays in to the overall geometry of a bike.
Think of it like this: I had a Funny Bike from the 1980s - it had a 700c in the back and 600a up front. Now, if I added a longer fork, the bike would have become a chopper bike, as the headtube was not designed to have a longer fork. The same with rake, the headtube was not angled to have a fork with further or less rake.
Altering the rake won't **** your bike's handling up nearly as bad as riding a 650c wheel. I've ridden both and much prefer a different rake as opposed to a steeper head tube.
My
Surly has a BMW fork and the BMW fork was just 1/4" longer than the stock surly fork. I couldn't feel a difference at all and have ample room for barspins. I wouldn't ever throw the fork on a "track" bike. But a Surly / Iro / Pake is fine. Anything with a road geo and track ends won't handle that much differently.
Ignore comments from people along the lines of "if you wanna do barspins, get a bmx". The reason people hate on fixed tricks can be summed up into one social condition called the "narcissism of small differences".