What is Trail?

Trail is the horizontal distance between your forks steering axis and the center of the front tire’s contact patch.  Setting the trail too long or short can make a huge difference to how your buggy performs and stears

Learn more about trail  Wikipedia.

When making a set of forks for a buggy, the rake and trail must be set correctly. The links on this post should help you work out the correct rake and trail for your buggy.

 

rake and trail

Trail is a function of head angle, fork offset or rake, and wheel size. Their relationship can be described by this formula

Formula for Trail

 

Where R_w wheel radius, A_h is the head angle measured clock-wise from the horizontal and O_f is the fork offset or rake. Trail can be increased by increasing the wheel size, decreasing or slackening the head angle, or decreasing the fork rake or offset. Trail decreases as head angle increases (becomes steeper), as fork offset increases, or as wheel diameter decreases.

Try this Trail Calculator


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