Got that stem slammed and still can’t get low enough? The standard angle stem on most road bikes is 6 degrees so if you’ve already flipped this and have it slammed right down to the headtube, you’re going to have to look at other options. The easiest way to get even lower is to switch to a “steeper” 17 degree stem. Flipped of course, because if your stem isn’t flipped, you’re dead to me. (kidding, but seriously…)

Using a handy online calculator (link below) you can easily visualise the geometry changes that different length and angle stems will make without having to guess or purchase a bunch of stems to try. You can really get your nerd on and mess with angles, length and stack height until you settle on a setup that works for you.

http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/stem.php

The blue line was my previous setup with a 110mm 6 degree stem, the red line is my new setup. You can see that using a 17 degree model also “levels out” the stem, giving the bike a far more aggressive and racy look. The new stem has reduced my reach by 11mm while increasing the drop by 11mm. It’s a big change in the scheme of things and might be slightly too much drop (you can see I even needed to raise the stem by 10mm to achieve this). I’ll need to rack up some decent rides to really get a feel for it.

Hey 3T, star bolts DO NOT BELONG ON A BIKE! Why not just use hex bolts like everyone else…