Stem Help

[Marek]

Hello,

I have a ITM Luxe Lite Stem and it is not quite the right angle for my new bike. Basically I need about 1cm more rise. Could someone tell me how to work out which Stem I need and how the angles etc work as I am not an expert on this. Any advice much appreciated.

Cheers

Marek.....

[Andrew G]

Stating the obvious here and you've probably already tried it, but can you just flip it? If it is currently giving a neutral rise then flipping it round will give a slight rise. Depends from stem to stem but might work for you.

[Jon H]

Only need 1cm?
I get lots of spam emails promising much more rise of the stem than that.

[Marek]

Right, the ITM Luxe Lite has an 80' angle, whatever that means, but when I flip it the rise is too much, I kind of need something in between. But only problem is that I don't know whether I need something with a larger or smaller angle as not sure where the 80' is measured.

[Marek]

Jon, I have no doubt that you get a lot of those types of emails from all the websites that you have subscribed to. Any suggestions on the Stem would be great.

[Sylv]

Hmm, using distant memories of math classes, assuming you have a long-ish stem of say 130mm, with the 10 degree angle (or 80 degree depending on what the manufacturer calls it), the effective rise at the end of the stem should be 23mm.

So if you reversed the stem you would have -23mm or a 46mm difference, way too much as you noticed.

If you can't fit a 10mm spacer, you would need a stem with a 14 or 15 degree angle (ie 76 or 75) to get 10mm more rise.

I think it's right but don't mind being corrected ...

[Jon H]

Oh, you mean that sort of stem

Have you got any spacers under the stem at the moment? If you just flip the stem over it will raise the bars up quite a lot, but you might be able to get to the right height by removing the spacers. Otherwise, you'll need to look for a stem with a slightly different angle. I'm guessing you're using something like a 13cm stem given your height, so a bit of trigonometry suggests you need about another 4 degrees to raise it by 1cm, so look for a stem with a 84 degree angle or thereabouts.

[Sylv]

Alternatively, get one of these

[img]http://www.lickbike.com/lickimages/1186.gif[/img]

[Sylv]

Jon's right, you need 80 + 4 and not 80 - 4. So still a negative rise but 4 degrees less steep.

[Wal]

[quote]If you can't fit a 10mm spacer, you would need a stem with a 14 or 15 degree angle (ie 76 or 75) to get 10mm more rise.

[Marek]

Cheers guys, have had a look around on the shopping sites but half of them don't say what angles the stems are which aint much use. For the short term I may go for flipping the stem moving it down a bit and sticking the spacers on top, a bit of a bodge but better that than a sore back hey. Thanks for the angle and tips.

Cheers

Marek.....