long, long fork
 

Rats. I thought I had figured all the angles on the build I am doing. This is a LARGE frame Raleigh that I am making into a fixed gear. I thought I had found someone who could get me the fork for this frame, but today he says his source has dried up. I need a standard (1") threaded fork at least 280mm to make sure the threads catch. That is long. I have several big frames, and none have more than 250mm.

Any advice about where to find such a thing? I would ideally like to have it made for a 27" wheel, but I would not think a 700 would present much of a problem. I would like chrome, but would take any finish or color.

j

I had the same problem, I could only find one as big as 250 and need about 255mm. I ended up selling the frame out of frustration. The guy who bought the frame had someone cut the steartube in the center or close to the bottom and weld in a small diameter pipe as an extention. With stear tubes as long as these it shouldn't pose a problem for getting the stem in, however it is not something I would want on one of my bikes. I still made the right choice in selling it I think.

Have you looked at new threadless forks in terms of length? You could switch to threadless, possibly. Another option would be a custom fork build, I think you'd be able to find a number of builders who will do just a fork.

Right here:

http://aebike.com/page.cfm?PageID=30...ils&sku=FK2483

unicrown and theadless, but it's long enough.

And surly's steamroller fork is apparently long enough too.

naive question: can a threadless fork be threaded? Can a well-set up LBS do this? Any caveats to doing it?

I do not know. I know any LBS would have a tap device, but putting threads on the outside of something, I dunno.

I have a tall old schwinn with a chrome fork I will check the lenght for you

Cool. But I am starting to find out that anything more than 250mm is pretty much impossible.

So, how did it come to pass that newer bikes have such short headtubes?

j