You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
hello all, I fitted a -1 degree angle set to my Ripley carbon v4 frame in a bid to slacken it out like the Ripley af. I have been running a 140mm fork prior to this adjustment and much preferred the bike with the slightly higher front end. Now that I have the angle set installed the steering is very ‘floppy’ and light making smaller, low speed manoeuvres much more difficult (impossible really).
I fell down this rabbit hole recently. I'm still in it.
You're running a 10mm longer fork than stock, which will slacken the head angle by about half a degree. You've then also added a -1 angleset. So you've knocked a degree and a half off the stock head angle in total. A fairly large change.
Whilst this number in isolation would in theory slow the steering down a bit, the changes you made also introduce other changes to all sorts of other numbers - bb height, seat angle, reach etc. Use the Mad Scientist MTB calculator to get a flavour if you're interested.
Whilst I don't know the answer, my advice would be to revisit what made you want to do it in the first place. Then experiment with bar height (i.e. move spacers below stem to compensate for the slightly lower front end due to the angleset), stem length (longer might counteract the shorter reach introduced by the angleset, though it would also quicken the steering in theory), and maybe even bar width/rise.
Ultimately its a case of trial and error to find what suits, and everyone is different in terms of how they fit their particular bike, and their preferences. Good luck!
Floppy how? Twitchy? Slow and less responsive?
If you've slackened the head angle, you've dropped height of the bars so you'd want to extend the fork rather than shorten it to get the front end higher.
If the Angleset you've fitted is an external cup that replaced an internal lower bearing, the added height under the headtube would usually get the bars roughly back to where they started. If it was already and external lower bearing then yeah, your bars will be lower so adding 10mm to the fork should get your bars back to where they were. (mostly, they'll still be a bit closer to you which sounds like a good thing if you've had to go for a super short stem).
Whether that'll address the floppy feeling depends on what you mean by floppy I guess.
I added 35mm riser bars to my Rise which made it feel a lot more stable on flat corners and low speed stuff, particularly while seated. It wasn't the steering that felt bad, but the bike didn't feel stable with bars as low as they were so in that case, adding height helped the problem. It felt twitchy and sensitive and adding higher bars felt like it calmed things down a bit.
How does the rest of the (carbon) Ripleys' geometry compare with the AF version? The 'wheel flop' you're noticing is something you will potentially get used to/compensate for after a while - how many miles have you got on the new set up?
I'm running an angleset in my Ripmo AF (purely out of curiosity/wanted to see what all the fuss was about with 63.5 degrees of head angle). I haven't found it detrimental when climbing now I've got used to it. But I am planning to go back to the stock set up shortly, to really get a feel for which I prefer or perceive as 'better'. The slacker set up feels more stable at speed and better when descending steep stuff (I think), so it'll be interesting to return to stock, having got used to the slack, and really know if that's the case, or whether the 'sharper handling' of the stock set up is in fact preferable.
Vis stack height - I run a lot of spacers and a riser bar (back injuries - not keen on a hunched position).
The bar height is fine. I used a works component headset and as noted above it pretty much retains the stack due to the slight increase in headset dimensions.
by ‘floppy’ I mean that the steering is way too twitchy and reactive, the front wheel dives to the side when steering. The front of the bike is at its highest in a straight line and then turning the bars it drops down fairly suddenly, which makes the steering feel floppy to me. Not consistent, so when cornering around tighter trails at a slower pace the bike tucks in and wants to dive. It’s essentially too reactive and quick, kind of like a tight rope twitchy sensation.
The geometry between the AF and carbon look to be the same except for the 1 degree slacker head angle. Both bikes are rated to run 120-140mm forks. My goal was to get a touch slacker, reduce the reach a tad and drop the front end a smidge based on my preference for the 140mm pike fork I’m running.
In my mind I thought the slacker head angle would slow the steering down a bit. High speed descents feel good but the slow speed handling is, well a hand full.