Steve, The appearance wasn't limited to the intrinsic appearance of the stem, but also to its dimension and angle! I was limited to 135mm, forty degree stems - uck! BTW, I like the bars level with the saddle.
I appreciated Patrick's call for a long collared stem (a la Bruce Gordon?); but these would add weight, and so may not find the economies of scale if eschewed by those lured by minimal weight ... Likewise, I don't have the dollars to pay someone for a custom stem like that -- Nittos max my wallet! It seems the sloping top tube 'compact' geometry has worked getting the bars into a better position with production threadless frames, but I personally don't appreciate more than a two degree top tube slope. Hoping my earlier reference to notable frame builders' opinions on threadless did not offend, I simply do not want my preference to disappear with another questionable superiority of design. I recall Ross Shafer bemoaning the influence of a certain magazine editor that motivated MTB cable routings to the top tube. Knowing it didn't help anything, but Ross went along, or sold far fewer bikes. The inside of my knee is still scarred from flesh being removed by top tube routings; the old Ritchey Timbercomp with its oh so clean top tube never had a problem with cables getting cluttered with branches ... or otherwise! (please, no tangent thread on this topic!!!) I am, for the record, full in favor of Rivendell selling a bunch of threadless forks (a bunch!), AND in creating a threadless stem as Patrick described (who else but Riv?)! Cheers to all, Chris Tucson, AZ On Dec 24, 2:03 pm, Steve Palincsar <palin...@his.com> wrote: > On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 12:03 -0800, Chris Halasz wrote: > > Tried a bike this past year with a threadless stem; it was the largest > > sized, and I could *not* find a production stem that brought the bars > > within a cm of saddle height (cm to zero difference) that wasn't > > stretched too far, or just incredibly ugly. Even then, I couldn't get > > it to work. Maybe if the steerer hadn't been pre-cut. > > That's definitely an issue - most threadless stems are butt ugly. The > Nitto TFL was not, but that was an accident, and we won't see them > again. The Nitto lugged threadless stem is nice, but definitely not > inexpensive. Same is true for the fillet brazed Nitto track threadless > stem - and they're not only expensive, they're only in 25.4 and long > sizes. And what's more, none of these have removable faceplates. > > There are some gorgeous custom threadless stems out there. They're > expensive, and again as a rule they don't have removable faceplates. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
