Two bikes. Exactly the same but one has a full carbon fork and the other has a carbon fork with aluminum steerer. Other than a slight weight difference...what difference might there be if any?
I was riding a KHS with a straight 1-1/8" AL steerer carbon fork last year. They claimed it was smoother on rough terrain than an all carbon tapered fork. I have to agree. Rode a lot of high speed washboard and only a suspension fork had a smoother ride.
My $.02: I have the same opinion about fork material as I do about bike frames. It's not so much about whether a particular material is superior for a particular bike component, but rather who designed, engineered, and manufactured that component. You can get excellent products using either carbon, aluminum, or even steel alloys. But, you can also get some fairly poor ones as well. So, the important question to ask is this component properly designed and manufactured for it's intended use -- not what material it is made from. IMHO, one should be especially careful. A cracked steerer or fork leg can have disastrous consequences -- just ask George Hincapie after his nasty crash in Paris-Rubaix caused by a broken steerer. In that case however, the fork was damaged in an earlier crash, and G H probably should have waited for a replacement bike. Personally, I prefer alloy or steel fork steerer because they are less fussy about bolt torques when installing stems and adjusting headset bearings. This is particularly important for adventure cycling, where you may have to adjust a lose headset, far from home and your torque wrench!
