My recent purchase of a new fork got me interested in the offset/rake and trail etc - things I hadn't thought about before.

Aside from my own purchases, I've been trying to figure this out - ignoring handling issues, do you think the stress caused to a bike's frame (head tube weld) by a longer fork could be compensate for by a fork with less offset, seemingly providing less leverage? I ask because I imagine a fork with loads of offset, e.g. 20cm, would provide lots of leverage, hence extra stress on the head tube, in the same way as a very long stem on a carbon steering column (eek) would...

Cheers.

Sb

Unless you made the bike into a raked out chopper, I wouldn't be concerned about the head tube breaking off your bike. If your frame can't handle a reasonably longer fork, it wasn't very strong in the first place.

I know you said to ignore handling, but putting a longer fork on will decrease head angle and increase trail. If you also reduce the rake of the fork, you will further increase the trail and aggravate any handling problems you created with the longer fork. You need to increase the rake of the fork to bring the trail number back to where it was.

Trail .. its a distance on the ground, between the line through the head tube, and a plumb line down from the axle.

change either the HTA or the rake and you change the trail .. it's a number you can compare. Measure.