I rather like this one. Admittedly the bike helps too.

Are you talking about the white Battaglin? While the fade on the other one is extraordinary, it is a case where more is more. Should have stopped a while back. But I heard it comes with a free bowl of soup.

How about the weight of the additional (thicker-walled) quill length on non-threadless stems?

Quill stems still look fine to me, and so do threadless stems.

I prefer the latter for lung-bursting climbing and sprinting, though. I'm no strongman, but I can feel the torsional flexing in svelte aluminum quill stems when I'm really honking on the bars.

Threads asking "How do I remove my stuck quill stem wedge from the bottom of the steerer tube?" come up once or twice a year on Bike Forums. And while a few of my bikes with quill stems developed so-called indexed headset problems, none of my (high-mileage) bikes with threadless headsets have.

For some reason, I love looking at the Kore stem on my main fixed-gear bike. Looks the business.

(Not my photo: borrowed from a current eBay auction.)

I think the grease on the stem keeps things from sticking, so yeah, the wedge always comes loose.

I don't think one is better than the other, they're just different. Some prefer quills, some prefer threadless, and that's just fine, variety being the spice of life and all that.

Honestly, quill stems with very little showing above the max line also look crappy, especially in stems 110 or more.

Aesthetics are important after fit, though. And sometimes a threadless adapter and stem (and spacers) can be useful AND attractive,

I'm betting anyone who came of biking age circa 2000 thinks quills are fugly.

Here's a polished Ritchey on my threadless converted PGN-10. I think the faceplate is pretty artful.

I adjust the height of my threadless stems as frequently as I adjust the height of my quill threaded stems.


...to be clear, it's almost never for both. After the fit is dialed in on each, I don't touch em.
I have never been riding a fitted quill stem bike and been like 'boy, I sure would like to quickly drop this stem height 20mm for the rest of my ride!'. But if I did, I could do the same with my threadless bikes.

Whar is that one?

Something I've never been clear on; what do you do if you want to raise your threadless stem higher than the spacers?

With a quill stem, you buy a new, taller stem. With a threadless setup, you buy a new, higher-rise stem.

Or you buy an adapter. This is a threadless-to-threadless adapter that raises the handlebar. You can also buy an adapter that both raises the handlebar and replaces the quill stem with a threadless setup.

Why purchase a bike that doesn't fit?

A "good deal" that is going to need a new fork to be "just right" maybe isn't such a bargain. Plenty of used bikes have the full allowable length steerer intact.



The answer to many questions about turning a bike into something it currently isn't comes down to "why?". Why put mud tires on a road bike? Or touring racks, or disc mounts on a rim brake bike, or the wrong size wheel, or aero bars on an MTB. Sell the wrong bike and buy the right one.

My genuine answer to this is- buy a bike that fits properly. There are so many geometry options for 'road bike' or 'gravel bike' or whatever category you want to apply to this, that is is pretty goofy to own a bike that puts you in an uncomfortable position. With that said, many people used to be comfortable on a bike they own and are no longer comfortable with the cockpit setup due to age, injury, or whatever. For them...
- Use a positive rise angled stem.
- Buy commonly available riser drop bars from Specialized, Ritchey, Surly, SQ Lab, Red****, Soma, and others.
- Buy commonly available riser flat/sweep bars if you want a flat bar cockpit.
- Get a new fork with more steerer.

The last option is an extreme option and one that is obviously rarely used due to cost.
While there is a kludge option where you use a stem extender(mentioned earlier in another post), most of those arent compatible with carbon steerers.

I wonder whether the post that you and Kontact and I responded to was meant to be a "Gotcha!" or instead represented genuine curiosity.

If it was supposed to be a 'gotcha', it was such a bad attempt that I didn't even recognize that as a possibility.
At the same time, it seems so obvious that the easy answer is to use a rise angle stem, that the question also seems a bit disingenuous.


Hmm.

The Nitto variants posted here look the unugliest to me. Here's my contribution.

If I'm able to buy a stem that makes a non-fitting bike fit, the result is a bike that fits. That costs less than a bike. It's similar to buying a bike with an uncomfortable saddle. The remedy typically is to replace the saddle, not the bike. Sure, there are bikes with enormous stems, and even those should be judged in context and can't categorically be called mistakes or bodges.

BOOM! And costs MUCH less than a custom-frame bike.

I had one of these Deda Zero stems on an old Kona years back and it's probably the best looking threadless stem shape I've seen. I grabbed this photo from an ebay ad. Seems like there are a few other color options--I think mine was more of a gunmetal grey. They are from the early 2000s I think so all used or NOS (no issue to the C&V crowd!).

It was genuine curiosity; all my bikes are quill.

Fwiw, pretty much all of my regular riders have 1 1/8" threadless stems. I need to have my bars levels with my saddle due to a chronic pinched nerve in my neck, and I've found that achieving that height is much easier with threadless setups where I can rely on a wide variety of angled stems, spacers, etc. I can do it with Technomic quill stems and the like, but IMO that extensive stem length looks goofier than the ungainly threadless look (well, both are somewhat ugly, really).

Cables were not long enough to raise the bars anymore but this fit just fine and rides very well despite all the .

It was a rescue/save from the dump so.......

Aging and health complicates things. I've got a few road bikes that used to fit me for 'sporty' riding but I've accepted that I can no longer ride them with a quill stem and drop bars. I also really don't like the look of riser stems on these bikes so I'm slowly moving into swept back bars as a compromise.
It's not so bad. This Sakai has a 53 seat post and 56.5 top so North road bars were the answer. Before and after.

Nah. While I generally prefer old bikes, I recognize genius when I see it.

Here's a blue version of the Portofino I like even better. Check out the brake levers and the saddle: