Flip or lower

hodge68

Starting to feel the need to get lower , at the moment my bars are only slightly lower than my saddle, if at all. So my question is do i flip the stem, which is angled up or lower the bars by moving spacers above the bars.
How will this affect the reach/handling.
Hodge

Gizmodo

Start with flipping the stem, it won't affect handling as you are not altering the length. If it's too low you might put extra pressure on your hands/wrists/arms, if it's not low enough then you can start to think about moving spacers.

Raffles

hodge68 wrote:

Starting to feel the need to get lower , at the moment my bars are only slightly lower than my saddle, if at all. So my question is do i flip the stem, which is angled up or lower the bars by moving spacers above the bars.
How will this affect the reach/handling.
Hodge

before you start adjusting anything, how do your shoulders and neck feel after riding your bike in its current guise for about 20 miles ?

prawny

I went for 5mm lower then raise and flip and repeat until it felt right. When I started I had my stem pointing up and at the top of the stack, eventually was happy enough with it slammed and flipped but I was only riding 20 miles at a time 10 times a week, I have it higher now but still flipped over

Edit: depending on the length/angle of your current stem filling it might make a fair bit more difference than just dropping it on the spacers.

Mr Will

I'd flip first purely for aesthetic reasons - to my eyes upward pointing stems always look odd, whereas a few spacers makes no difference.

hodge68

Cheers folks, Will try the flip. No problems with my neck or shoulders on 20mile rides, but do get a bit of pressure/discomfort in my hands. I will just have to see how it goes i guess.
Thanks again

dru

http://alex.phred.org/stemchart/Default.aspx

Use this to help show you the effect of flipping the stem or removing the spacers etc.

hodge68

Dru wrote:

http://alex.phred.org/stemchart/Default.aspx

Use this to help show you the effect of flipping the stem or removing the spacers etc.

Thanks Dru