Headset or Steerer Tube From Straight To Tapered Conversion.

All is not lost. If you have a lovely set of old forks and have acquired a new frame with a tapered head tube all may not be lost.

Now lets forget for the moment that the steerer tube may already have been cut too short for the new frame, because we are going 'glass half full' here OK :)

Well the company Hope do a converter for your race to sit on which takes the 1 1/8th crown to a 1 1/2.

However, I discovered a better solution.

First though I need to explain what I have done to the headtube on the bike. This was actually a straight 1 1/8th top and bottom but I converted the bottom to take a future tapered fork !

I used the Cane Creek 40 series converter called EC 44/40.

Now, that's what you get in the pack. headtube race, bearing and crown race.

On one set of 1 1/8th forks I installed the Hope converter and Cane Creek crown race.

When I installed the headtube race it was 3mm proud of the headtube due to the internal space being 9mm and there being 12mm on the cup. I removed it. I took it to a professional called Davie who removed the excess with a high tech machine while I watched in amazement !

He even out a champ-fer on it !

Anyhoo, back to the story. I actually found a better solution when looking for a race for another set of forks I found that Cane Creek do a converter/race in one for the 40 series headsets !

I duly got hold of one and fitted it to the lovely Reba SL forks.

Now we have a set of rigid carbon forks which will allow a 29er wheel, and also the Reba suspension forks in a tapered style to use on the 26er hard tail.

 More changes are coming, but lets have some fun on what we have first.