Originally Posted by
guadzilla
Well, I do know what dimensions I need (I've had my Ridley fitted professionally) and given my proportions, I need a short ETT and a tall stem. With most bikes, if I get the ETT right, the HT is too low and requires a stack of spacers; if I get the HT right, the ETT is too long and requires a short stem.
With the larger frame, I will need an 80mm stem in order to get the bike to fit. That is a bit too short for my liking - I would like a longer stem (I find it helps me with leverage when I am climbing or off the saddle).
And given that I spend a significant portion of the year on a small island and it takes 2 days of travel (by boat and then a flight) to reach civilization, trying out various Lynskey models is not an option. Sadly, my current bike has an integrated headset, so I cant even measure the stack height.
So I would like to try to figure out if I can indeed get the smaller frame to work - which requires getting a rough idea of how much stack height the headset caps add to the HT.
Thanks!
So, since you prefer a longer stem for performance reasons, it seems like you are kind of stuck with a relatively short HT and a bunch of spacers.
Headset cups vary a bit from headset to headset. But ball park for total height of the top and bottom cups (not counting seals, caps and spacers) figure a bit over 1.5cm on the low end to a bit over 2cm on the high end. For example, the combined height of the top and bottom cups of my Cane Creek S8 headset is about 2cm (bottom is hair over 1cm while top is a hair under); while the aheadset cups on another bike come in at about 8mms each. So if you went with 15cm HT you mentiond (Lynsky Sportive ML?) and used my Cane Creek S8 headset, your total headtube with only cups pressed into the headtube, but before assembling of the rest of the headset, would be about 17cm.