In this article (bit.ly/2zLX8MZ) about bike fit, the author supports that

What is your opinion?

I said I agree, but only in the case where the rider is fit enough to ride the bike. So I agree, and then the buyer needs to get fit enough to be comfortable in the designed condition. Too many people come here complaining about their bike fit, when it's their fitness that's the issue. The thing is, most folks who come to BF are riding bikes for fitness/health reasons. Yeah, so get with the program. And yeah, sometimes I just have no patience.

Only applicable to race bikes, and flexible backbone riders.. probably all under 35.

and forks with carbon fiber steerers .. Minimize the leverage .. you are bent way over to reduce frontal area and thus air resistance.

Bike racing is about pain, if you can go faster in spite of the pain, you might win..

Agree, because Rule #45.

In all seriousness, just to say "a well-fitting bike doesn't have any headset spacers" is ridiculous because you can achieve the exact same fit with a horizontal stem and spacers, or with an up-angled stem and no spacers. If their contention is that the right frame size would lead to a correct fit with a more-or-less horizontal stem and no spacers, well maybe but you're still at the mercy of what the frame makers are putting out.

Yes, if you PERFECTLY fit the bike, you wouldn't need spacers, but that a dumb, meaningless analysis.

First of all there's no such thing as a perfect fit. Things change, and riders may want to adjust their riding position accordingly. Trimming a fork based on zero spacer stack, means no ability to readjust later.

Secondly, unless the frame is custom made, there's limited control of head height, so fitting the frame is a matter of getting to the right ball park, then finishing the job with stem length and angle, fine tuned with spacers.

My opinion is I don't ride so uncomfortably bent over any more .

one of my bikes Fork with steel steerer tube, not carbon..

Sure, I suppose. With minor adjustments in the saddle and bars, perhaps, everything else is at the "right" spot.

But over more than four decades of cycling I have yet to find any bike fit "perfectly" for me. There are always minor (sometimes major) misses in what the designer imagined for the geometry and what my specific body and riding style dictate. Usually, overcome with simple saddle/stem/bar changes, though occasionally impossible to the point of that specific frame being inappropriate for me.

I suppose that the old "ten speed" from the '70s fit sufficiently well, but then I was young and strong and it pretty much didn't matter that much to me that a fit wasn't "perfect." Its top tube was probably an inch and a half too long for me, more or less, and (for preference) I probably could have used drop bars with far less drop in them. But it was close enough to work well.

What seems to work best for me these days: reach of about ~350mm, stack of about ~550-570mm, bars with some rise/sweep, for a more-upright riding position and more-pedestrian pace than in past years. (Getting older has its pros/cons.) Not a lot of standard, off-the-shelf products meet those basic measurements. I've found on some frames putting a good inch or two of spacers beneath the stem is sufficient. On my current bike, I'm at the limit of the steerer tube already, so any significant adjustment upward (beyond the adjustable stem) would entail a longer steerer on a new fork, though keeping the same geometry of the current frame. Usually, I've ended up with a different stem, bar and saddle arrangement, and that's been sufficient. Works well for my own limb/torso length and riding style.

This is an absolutely crazy idea. Would you buy a bike with no ability to change seat height, or a helmet with strap length adjustment?

Buying a bike that requires no spacer is buying a bike that you can NEVER lower the bars, no matter what happens to your fitness and flexibility.


AND, some fork steerer failures came from not having a spacer to distribute flex between the headset and stem.


Ideally, a bike that is perfectly fit would have 10-20mm of spacers so you can still lower the stem and have some spacer for steerer health.

I don't agree. Though there are some technicalities to the semantics of that sentence.
If the bike fits you perfectly, then why would you put spacers in the headset? Or why would you change anything?

But bikes typically don't fit perfectly. So they must be changes to suit the person riding them. Some might need headset spacers.

Exactly. And what's the problem with headset spacers? And why is an extended headtube better than headset spacers? And am I the only one who thinks tall head tubes generally look hideous?

This is not about being bent over. You can be bolt upright without spacers, it just depends on the design of the frame.

See this Parlee? How much head tube extension do you want?

I would have had to be in the NL Factory in 2003, to slap the hand of the guy reaching for the hacksaw

before the fork steerer was cut off in the 1st place. Cutting it down to some formula they used to march the frame size,

before shipping it out into the world market place,, where the original owner bought it.. i was 3rd in line.



So I got a BBB BHP 21, internal stem raiser and shim spacer set to bring it up to where it would have been, generally 1/3 of a Meter.

Doubled up on stems, to have the bar bag, over the fork crown mounted headlight, under the bars,

You could not have found a more apples and oranges match , fancy road bike with bling wheels, vs a touring load carrying bike for touring the world..

They are both Fruit, both Bikes..

You have your steerer sticking up over a foot above your headset?

So? , it's My Bike , no Carbon fiber anywhere .. fit for purpose..

got it in 2008, Rohloff hub alone costs a good chunk of how much I paid for the whole thing..


By the way, you must have very tiny feet , it's barely over 6 inches tall .. stand over height, straddling flat footed, is just right.





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The "foot" I'm using is 12 inches, or 31cm. 1/3 of a meter is 33cm, or 13 inches, not 6.

what ever, Kid.

Do you have 1/3 of a meter sticking up above your headset or 6"? I was just trying to understand your post.

No it's 300mm from crown race, seat of a typical fork bought separately.. to the un cut top..


There is; both headset bearings 13 cm of head tube, then the original factory set up had 3 10 mm spacers under the ITM stem..


By Buying the Very Clever BBB BHP 21 stem raiser, I was able to resurrect my riding position as if ..
I were able to have made them leave the steel fork steerer tube as it was when the fork company made it..


Im 70 been working on my bikes and on others in shops for 60 ..


OP was talking about carbon fiber race bike forks after all .. sorry for the distraction..







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Whatever, kid.

Yes. No need at all for spacers. Don't even think about either getting out of the condition at which you were fitted or improving it. Don't get sick. Don't crash. If you want to ride longer rides or shorter faster ones, get some more bikes and set them up right. Don't age. (And after that fitting, mark your seatpost with tape, clean it and the seat tube up with solvent, grease with epoxy and reinsert. Wouldn't want that ever changing.)

Ben (who makes it a point NOT to practice any of what I preached above.)