I got a good deal on it, and have always wanted a little lite truck style cargo bike. However, I didn't expect the easter egg hunt that would accompany the purchase in trying to find a compatible frame.
It seems like the broad swath of vintage hardtail mountain bike frames came with 1" steerers. In my amateur research digging up old catalogs, it appears that by the time -- say, Specialized -- started using 1 1/8" steerers they were also using suspension forks. Regarding that, I have a hard time parsing this part of the Crust product page:
For those of you looking to throw one on your early 2000's Big Hit:
Ok, so what if your axle-crown measurement is far off from 400mm? Then your head tube angle, seat tube angle, and bottom bracket height are going to change. Generally, frame angles will all change by about 1 degree per 10mm of axle-crown length difference, and your bottom bracket height will change by about 5mm per 10mm axle to crown. If your original fork is longer than 400mm, then the resulting angles with The Cargo Fork installed will be steeper and the bottom bracket will be lower. If your original fork is shorter than 400mm, then the resultant angles with The Cargo Fork installed will be slacker and the bottom bracket will be higher.
Can anyone help me wrap my head around what I should be looking for? It feels as though buying the 1 1/8" size fork severely limited my options for hardtail MTB conversion candidates. Should I be avoiding vintage suspension MTBs in the first place, or is not that big of a deal? I find bike geometry difficult to understand, haha.