Geometry query - Rake and trail effects on handling
I have a custom made frame with which I normally use a columbus fork (Carbon blades, alu steerer).
I specified the whole design myself so I knew up front exactly how it would fit and could make a fairly well educated guess on how it would handle. Suffice to say it's 'perfection' in all regards.
I recently removed the fork to have it custom painted.
In the meantime, I fitted an enve fork (full carbon) to be going on with. The Enve fork has 8mm more rake than the columbus.
As such, I expected the handling to a bit twitchier due to the reduced trail.
However, in reality I surprisingly found the opposite to be true! With the Enve fork I found cornering to be quite hard work and almost scary (understeer).
This is all completely counter intuitive to what I expected and commonly accepted geometry facts...
Now I'm curious as to WHY this might be? Can anyone suggest anything that could explain this?
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Perhaps this is just a classic case of 'There is far more to the way a bike handles than just fork rake & trail'!!