As more modern mountain bikes get slacker trail bike geometry, do you wonder if your existing bike might need a geometry update? Wolf Tooth’s new Headset Extender lower cups might just be the ticket to a more aggressive setup on your current bike (maybe paired with a modern offset fork?) Or you might use it to keep the same geometry on the bike if you want to decrease from travel or even swap to a rigid fork. In any case, adjustability means more options…
Wolf Tooth Lower Headset Cup Extenders adjust your geometry
Beyond their solid chainring offerings, dropper remotes & a cool set of chain pliers, Wolf Tooth often produces some great little tidbits to give more options on the bike – think: the Road & Goat Links or the Boostinator, via their Lindarets relationship. This new extended lower headset cup falls into that latter category.
By adding an extra extension to the lower headset cup, you lift the bottom bracket a bit and slightly slacken your headtube angle. That should give your current bike improved stability when descending and at high-speed. But be aware that getting slacker without changing fork offset will also affect Trail. That will impact handling at low-speed (as much as stability increases at high-speed), which is why modern trail bikes get modern offset forks. It is essentially the same thing we’ve seen from a number of companies that make bikes that can be converted from 29″ to 27.5+ wheels. Now you can just use it to experiment on your own bike.
Wolf Tooth also notes that it could help maintain your current geometry if you are changing forks. Putting a rigid fork onto a suspension corrected frame might need some extra axle-to-crown, as may changing from various road, cross, gravel, or bikepacking forks.
Tech details
The Lower Headset Cup Extenders add 10mm of axle-to-crown height to your existing fork. That’s generally not going to have a huge impact on your bike’s geometry – probably a bit less than 0.5° at the headtube and <5mm at the bottom bracket. But that might be just the small change you need to tweak your ride.
The extended lower cups are machined from 6061 alloy in the USA and weight 62-68g. They are sold on their own (you need to buy an accompanying upper headset cup if you need a complete headset setup) and include Enduro stainless steel sealed bearings.
Wolf Tooth makes a complete family of precision machined headsets, made in Minnesota to fit any bike.
Pricing & availability
Available now, they come in two versions – EC to fit 1.5″ lower headsets with external cups that press into a 49mm ID or ZS to fit 1.5″ lower headsets with internal Zero Stack cups that press entirely into a 56mm ID headtube.
For now the EC version is available in red, blue, or black ano & the ZS is black-only.
