rtay

OK, I posted a thread a while ago having a moan about the frame size of my new bike, which I was afraid was too big. I was getting lower back aches and this nearly drove me insane cos I had just bought a shiny new bike which I thought I might have to replace. Anyway, I flipped the 6 degree stem and the riding is now great with the slightly higher bars. No pain at all, and getting a lot of power into the bike. But is riding with a flipped stem correct? Sometimes I feel that when I pull on the bars, I get a little lift, which may be due to this. I could go put a 1cm spacer to raise the bar a little and put a 10mm shorter stem in, which would put the bars in nearly the same position, but will this change anything? After riding for a week, I am finding that I could afford to get lower though - but when I flipped the stem back, it feels a little too low and the back starts to tighten up again... so I flipped it back. Maybe after more riding I could get the bars lower again.... my riding is getting more and more aggressive, and I do get quite low, but it seems perhaps the reach is still a little too long. Any thoughts are appreciated...

RonH

Most 6 degree stems can go either way.
How long is the stem? Maybe a slightly shorter stem *not flipped* will do the trick.

AndrewP

You cant put a spacer under the bar if the head tube has been cut to length. To get the stem a little lower you could move a spacer from below the stem to above.

rtay

Thanks guys - the stem is 100mm, and when comparing the Trek bikes, it seems that the handle bars were a little longer, and the top tube about 6mm longer as well. So the reach of my make of bike (a local Aussie bikemaker called Cellbikes), is slightly longer than the average. I'll give the riding another few weeks and try flipping it back down.... thanks for the advice.