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size matters

i bought my colnago c40 just over three years ago, which was a follow on from about three years of steel colnago superissimo. both were fitted with the one inch steerer that has seen service on the 'modern' bicycle since time immemorial. well, for a long long time anyway.

the mountain bike had varied between 1.125" and 1.25" for a few years before settling on on the former for most of its short career. and while the logic of increasing the steerer diameter and thereby the area affected by the headset bearings seems quite defensible as far as knobbly tyres are concerned, the same cannot be said for the road bike.

my rationale? well, offroad there can be a distinct tendency to bump over things that go bang and that you weren't expecting to be there. and during this travail through the undergrowth, there can be much gnashing of teeth and twisting of handlebars.

onroad, and for the purposes of this article i am including the remnants of tarmac that constitute the roads of islay, there is considerably less opportunity to experience things that go bump in the night. and most of us get round corners by leaning into the bend, thereby minimising the turning of handlebars to the same extremes as met with through the mud and sand dunes.

so why change? well, not being as experienced a mechanic as some (quite a big 'some' actually), i asked those with just the experience you would need to answer this question. colnago told me that the move to 1.125" steerers/headsets was in the quest for increased torsional stiffness and smoother steering. but london-paris mechanic and uk eddy merckx importer, graeme freestone king may have hit on an alternative reason for the wholesale move to larger steerers. with the advent of the aluminium tubed bicycle, larger diameter tubes became a necessity as well as a marketing induced desire. and if the top and down tubes have seriously increased in diameter to improve frame rigidity, finding enough welding space on a standard head tube could prove difficult. and according to graeme, 6000 and 7000 series alloys are not 'fantastically weld-friendly'

what is not at issue is that the increased torsional stiffness does improve the handling, but that's not to say that those of us who are not mario cipollini can gain anything from this improvement. so moving from 1" to 1.125" begins to look more like a marketing trend than an inherent desire to provide us with the ultimate bicycle frame.

and why am i bothered? well, it's certainly not because nobody sells 1" headsets anymore. unfortunately chris king pink headsets cannot be had in the uk without special order (i asked) but it is possible to purchase a 1" headset from pretty much every headset manufacturer on the planet and it seems likely that this will remain the case for the foreseeable future. as far as my short sighted, self-centredness is concerned, colnago still fit 1" carbon forks to the master x-lite and (strangely enough) the c-50 time trial frame. i say strangely because the remainder of the c-50 range are all on 1.125". i don't really know whether the same can be said of other manufacturers' ranges.

no, the bit that has engendered the wrath of my text editor are the manufacturers of bicycle stems. they have, almost en masse, deserted the 1" standard like snow off a dry stone wall. if you read my piece on the london cycle show, you will be aware that i trawled stand after stand in search of the holy grail, to be sorely disappointed. the chaps at barnoldswick's best (hope technology) pointed out that they, in fact, had never manufactured a 1" steerer in their puff. one or two manufacturers, including zipp, supply a shim to allow fitting of the larger stem to the smaller steerer, which seems a tad unsound if you accept that the two clamp bolts on the stem now have to exert enough pressure to clamp the shim to the steerer which is possibly - and more than likely - carbon. what value torque settings now?

and just before i leave you to polish the bike, why is it that the bearings have been moved outboard on everybody's bottom bracket designs of late, all in the name of the great god 'torsional stiffness' while the headset bearings have moved inboard (integrated headset). has the increased stiffness gained from increasing the steerer diameter allowed the luxury of moving the bearings closer together? maybe, but moving the bottom bracket bearings outboard hasn't stopped them increasing the bb spindle diameter.

as my kids keep saying 'it's the fashion'.

if you'd like to read a comprehensive reasoning as to why integrated headsets are not such a great idea, click here

as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.