Originally Posted by makeinu

Yeah the face plate.

Good point, about the drop bars on quill stems, but it still just seems like it would be more elegant to have something that can slide straight in/out with minimal fiddling, plus there's the scratching issue mentioned by twitcho. As far as upgrading to a 31.8mm stem goes, most (all) of the light weight ones I see have 4-bolt face plates, which I suspect will require two bolts loosened instead of just one.

But I guess I don't have a choice if I can't get a flat carbon bar.