Originally Posted by
pastorbobnlnh
John,
Welcome to C&V. Great to have you. I'm not certain, but I don't believe that is the original stem for your Sports Tourer. The big give away is the rust. The stem pictured looks more like the one from a Varsity. I say I can't be certain because I've never been in the presence of a Sports Tourer. But I have two of its close cousins, a '71 & '72 Super Sport, and they have an aluminum stem made in England which has an "S" on both sides, just behind the bar clamping ring. I believe the Sports Tourer had the same stem. Now with all that said, I wouldn't worry about ditching the one in your picture.
If you look closely in this picture you can just make out the "S" between the brake lever extension and the bar wrap.
Yup, that's a stem from a Varsity. The alloy stem with the "S" embossed on the side was used on the Super Sports, Sports Tourer as well as the "gas pipe" Continentals.
I'm currently building up a NOS Superior frame that I found on eBay. The Superior is what the the Sports Tourer was called for the last couple of years of production. Instead of messing around with the old 13/16 forks, I bought a modern 1 inch fork and headset. In order to get this setup to work, I had a machinist friend make some aluminum reducing shims for the head tube so I could install the ISO 1 inch headset cups. Now I can use any ISO standard stem for 1 inch forks.