hello and welcome to another episode of bike fit tuesdays today's topic of conversation
stem length how does it affect your position how does it affect the handling of your bike
we're going to talk about it the world's longest step it's not the world's longest
stem there's a kind of ego thing there isn't there with stem length
a stem is a component that affixes the handlebar to the rest of the bicycle
it is part of the cockpit and it enables us to turn the handlebars
that's the world's shortest stem that is an anti-static zero millimeter step what happens
when your stem's too long absolutely nothing you want to get as long as possible don't you because
it looks cool yeah it looks cool so a couple of things the the biggest the biggest impacts
to your reach is that potentially your reach is going to be too long so you're going to end
up essentially doing a plank and having to ride a bicycle at the same time it's going to be propping
yourself up there'll be lots of pressure on your hands so you end up with neck and shoulder issues
there is a very strong correlation to between excessive reach and saddle ramifications as
well so saddle sound sores gentle numbness any saddle discomfort for that matter and it also
it when it's when it's extremely long i i kind of feel like the well it makes the bike handle
uh sluggishly you know it's kind of it slows up the handling quite a lot so
there's a sort of balancing act between you know high speed stability and the
things still feeling agile but fundamentally if it's if it's too long uh you probably get
numb hands or neck and shoulder issues or saddle issues and your bike ride like [ __ ]
probably be too short and you know i think it's it's worth noting to the viewers that stem lengths
come in between five and ten millimeter increments uh the i mean this is a 70 millimeter stem which
is not as short as they get they get shorter than this and this is 130 millimeter stem which
is again not as long as they the oh mountain bikes this though antibiotics that go down as
low as 40 mil uh or actually even in some cases this is a sort of direct mount um system but uh
on road bikes you know in some pro circles you might see 150 maybe even longer millimeters
in stem length and you know you you can you can fine tune that position and more often
one thing to consider is that there isn't one stem length like you could probably ride two or three
different stem lengths if it fits pretty good uh but the problem with having a length that's too
short again depends on the type of the bike having it too short can make the bike feel erratic and
quite um quite scatty it's particularly high speed so a lot of rides will end up with a sort
of high speed shimmy the you know the front wheel will start wobble a bit like laurence's bike on
the vietnam trip maybe you should look at those videos so it's worth pointing out or noting that
you don't want to go too short i depending on the bike i tend not to fit anything much shorter than
a 90 mil that being said if you've got a bike with a slacker head tube angle and a longer wheelbase
you you might be able to get away with something which you tend to find on smaller bikes or more
endurance orientated bikes you might get away with running something that's slightly shorter
the range i tend to fit is anywhere between 90 millimeters and 120 uh i can count on one hand
the amount of 120 millimeter stems i've fitted to people's bikes uh but i i lose count of the amount
of 90s that i've i fitted but i think that's more a testament to how people like to set their bikes
up i find myself having to reduce people's reach a lot uh on the grounds that people you know to buy
they buy silly bikes and we've touched on this subject a number of times now in the
last in the last week or two uh in the you know people buy aggressive race bikes which is not
really the right sort of product for consumers but that in in turn is why i end up fitting shorter
stems usually to kind of offload things like the hands the neck and the shoulders
so uh but i i must admit i don't very often find myself increasing stem length
my finding is generally that most people are too drawn out and stretched out rather than the
other way around i mean yes i guess you could if the bars were way too close to you you end
up looking like a you know a russian bear on a bicycle you know so you probably end up with more
pressure on your hands but i think they're more likely to stretch themselves out than they are to
make it make it too short a couple of points uh so first and foremost we kind of want it almost
as long as we can possibly get it but without you feeling stretched out because the the
mechanism of the stem is that it to a certain degree determines how a bike handles
and we don't want to go very very short to make it scatty we also want to get it longer for height
for high speed stability and i think we touched on this uh in a few videos ago but you you don't want
to feel stretched out if you feel stretched out you're way too stretched out on the ground that
as a human being you're you're good at absorbing uh dysfunction and and and actually you'll absorb
excessive reach to a point that where you start to notice it actually it is too late you know you're
way beyond where you ought to be so i would say unfortunately it's a relatively expensive
uh experimentation unless you go and buy a load of stems on ebay but if you have one of these
more modern uh integrated bikes it or it puts even more of an onus on having a fit first to ensure
that it's going to be right uh experimentation is probably key is my instinctive response
i think when you're buying a stem you need to be aware that they come in different
angles as well you don't want to end up buying something really extreme like this if you're
after a normal standard that's that's a negative 17 1730 ml stem and if we look at this so this
is a standard six degree you can see the difference so you know if you align the the
clamp areas you can see how much of a difference there is between yeah and these are the same
length and you can see how much closer the bore of the handlebar is going to be
depending on depending on the reach of the depending on the angle of the stem so not only
does it affect height but it also affects reach quite dramatically uh so so yeah it's something
else to really to really consider is the angle it's probably about a centimeter in it i reckon
it's more i've never already looked at the two of them next to one another i i usually find myself
you know taking stems like this off and just you know so for god's sake here comes another one but
it looks so cool man it does look cool i have i have fitted stems like this to people's bikes but
only you know with a pretty functional rider who's on a bike that fits them pretty well you know
usually there are a couple of spring to mind who are kind of cat one tattoo racers generally but
i mean if you're a consumer you're not racing this has no place on your bike i would almost go as far
as to say if your average height and you're riding anything over a 120 your bike is either too small
or it reaches too long so that concludes another episode of bike fit tuesdays i hope
that information was useful we're trying to just give you as much information as possible
to then go and help your purchasing decisions as always we do really want to encourage people
to get bike fits before pulling the trigger on a new bike because it can save you a lot of money in
the long run thank you always for watching please like comment subscribe leave your questions down
below and we'll do our best to answer them equally if you want to book a fit with james
i'll put a link to the booking page down below too that's all from us and see you soon