Originally Posted by
RJfos
I’ve never seen this before. The head tube actually deformed into an oval shape? I would think you’d notice other headset problems long before enough force was being applied to the steel head tube to deform it. Especially with the added reinforcement of a lugged frame.
This was pretty common BITD when MTBs took off; much was writ in the past about it. Bontrager, Ritchey, and Breezer stuck to 1" high quality steel for many years with no issues. Others upsized to 1-1/8" as an easy fix. Fisher saw the writing on the wall and went straight to 1-1/4". Fast forward to today, and 1-1/8" is the new "standard"