MacB
Lover of things that come in 3's
- Location
- Farnborough, Hampshire
Having taken a keen interest in this matter and various stem options I was wondering what peoples views are on certain aspects. I've also been playing on this calculator Joe pointed me to:-
http://alex.phred.org/stemchart/Default.aspx
a truly excellent resource, once I'd got my head round it
Through trial and error I've found that there is a limited range of saddle height and setback(saddle nose to centre of BB vertically) that I can operate with. Most fittings seem to agree that these are hard and fast parameters and you should work forward from here for full bike fit.
Again most fitting advice seems to agree that, unless you're full on racing, there's a limit to how far below saddle level you want the bars, 2 inches max is often mentioned. There's also no shortage of opinion indicating that comfort doesn't really begin until bars are level with saddle or higher. Yet when I look at bikes themselves this can be difficult to achieve. Due to dimensions, angles and length of steerer tubes the vast majority of stems on offer won't do it. There are riser stems, mainly maxing out at a 40 degree rise, but a lot seem to be zero to a max of 10 degrees. A lot of the riser options also seem to be older technology, ie 2 bolt design and mtb orientated.
My concerns are around how much is too much and in which direction? This is respect of bike handling, especially steering. Is there an optimum position for bars, or hand positions, in relation to the front wheel? Lots of wooly questions as usual, have read through Sheldon but seems a bit scarce of this matter.
http://alex.phred.org/stemchart/Default.aspx
a truly excellent resource, once I'd got my head round it
Through trial and error I've found that there is a limited range of saddle height and setback(saddle nose to centre of BB vertically) that I can operate with. Most fittings seem to agree that these are hard and fast parameters and you should work forward from here for full bike fit.
Again most fitting advice seems to agree that, unless you're full on racing, there's a limit to how far below saddle level you want the bars, 2 inches max is often mentioned. There's also no shortage of opinion indicating that comfort doesn't really begin until bars are level with saddle or higher. Yet when I look at bikes themselves this can be difficult to achieve. Due to dimensions, angles and length of steerer tubes the vast majority of stems on offer won't do it. There are riser stems, mainly maxing out at a 40 degree rise, but a lot seem to be zero to a max of 10 degrees. A lot of the riser options also seem to be older technology, ie 2 bolt design and mtb orientated.
My concerns are around how much is too much and in which direction? This is respect of bike handling, especially steering. Is there an optimum position for bars, or hand positions, in relation to the front wheel? Lots of wooly questions as usual, have read through Sheldon but seems a bit scarce of this matter.