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Fitting a tapered steerer into a straight headtube
I recently scored a set of 2012 RS reba forks for a good price, the only problem was they had a tapered steerer and my old Giant XTC (2003) was setup for a straight steerer. After a little bit of research and measuring I came to the conclusion that the original headset was an internal cup or zero stack and the ID of the headtube was 44mm, this meant I could get a EC44/40 bottom cup from Hope's 'mix and match' range and it would accept the tapered steerer with a stack height of 14mm. when I got it I was really impressed by the quality and it fitted well without a problem. So if you need a new set of forks for an older frame this could open up your choices as straight steerers are getting harder to get at a good price, the only other thing you need to watch is the length of the heatube because it might be too short to clear the taper, mine was 120mm long and cleared the taper by at least 15mm.
Hope this helps someone as the information about doing this sort of thing isn't really out there and I ended up having to take a punt and thankfully it worked.
cheers
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I ended up doing a similar thing when I built my Spider using the forks from my old Bianchi. The bottom headset bearing went from an internal on the old bike to external on the Spider, I also couldn't find out any info so took it to the LBS and they pointed me in the right direction (I used Cane Creek instead of Hope, they have a mix and match option too).
What it does do though, is alter your head angle by 1 or 2 degrees as you're effectively putting a spacer between the fork and frame. If you're building a trail/AM bike this shouldn't matter but may be more of an issue on an XC racer.