Froyd Stellar

I'm turning my sons 1985 World Sport into my commuter/city bike. My previous conversion used North Road bars, but I wanted to maintain a little more of a sporty character on this bike. I'm pretty happy with most components but I'm stuck on the stem. In order to have the bars as high as I want them for city riding, I needed either a Nitto Technomic 100mm long, or a raised stem, also 100mm long.

Nitto Technomic: I like the more classic look of the -17 rise. To me it reads "sporty". Also the horizontal line of the stem works parallels the top tube and the saddle line for a pleasing cohesive effect. However, the amount of stem exposed from the headtube is fairly substantial, and not pleasing to my eye.


Raised stem: I get more beach cruiser vibes and lose the cohesive look of the horizontal lines but in the vertical segment I think it looks way better than the Nitto because the vertical extension is not one continuous line, rather it's broken in two sections where the rise begins, making the stem a lot less imposing.


In terms of comfort, both stems get the handlebars high and far enough for me, so I'm just going after the style points and would welcome your opinions.



Sorry---I was going to post pictures but BikeForum won't allow me because I'm don't have 10 posts yet.

Doug Fattic 

easily a erased stem will look better and be in the spirt of a city bike.

machinist42

OP's Album.

52telecaster

I use porteur bars and tall stems on most of my builds. If you are going with 100mm reach I personally think the dirt drop style looks better. I sometimes use a 60mm reach and for some reason that makes the technomic look better to me. When using a kalloy dirt drop style I find it difficult to get bars with tight bends through it.

OTS 

Both valid posts above, agree with Doug & agree with 52, a shorter reach if your using a Technomic will change the “LOOK” and I have done that in builds.
Very personal choice of course..
I prefer the look of the raised stem over the Technomic for the Townie.
In the process of doing a Townie build myself & have settled on a raised stem so I may be projecting my choices on your project.
If you decide to go with the raised stem & decide to change the “LOOK”, it will be pretty easy with that 2 bolt stem.

nlerner

Another vote for the dirt drop stem.

Froyd Stellar

haha...but only to get the bars off (unless I trade the Nitto for a two-bolt "7" stem )

Froyd Stellar

Well so far it seems to be pretty unanimous!

By the way, thanks so much to @machinist42 for helping me out with the images. Much appreciated!