Hey guys ,

Just flipped my STEM and took out a spacer today to see how comfy I would be. All went nicely but when I was decneding a hill on the test ride after the job was done, I hit a bump (not a huge one but big enough to jar me for a second ) at about 35mph. Got back from test ride and noticed that the handlebars rotated downward about 1cm after I hit that bump. I then remembered i didn't torque them to 5nm after changing them. Only to about 3nm on all four bolts. Simply forgot to torque them all the way before the test ride. So I immediately examined everything and found no damage other than one tiny spot where the bar meets the stem where the clear coating on the bars got scrunched. So, do you think I did my bars in, or will they live to see another day? They are bontrager isozone vrc carbon. Thanks in advance. I feel so stupid because I never make careless mistakes like this.

Holy crap it didn't asplode?

Seriously, your fine. Now do you have an actual torque wrench/tool or just guessing the torque?

Flipping the stem is worth about an inch. Then there is the spacer. Why do borh at once? Was the stem flipped up or down?

So no friction paste, then.

Friction paste won't help if the torque is too low. Especially a big bump.

No paste and torque was to low. I have torque wrenches for everything. I never guess torque. On anything. For the bike I use the red bontrager torque wrench. I hand tighten first to get everything even and then torque to spec. Forgot to torque to spec because excited to get ride new position. It may seem like an extreme drop yes, but I wanted to see how low I could get comfortably without putting too much weight on my hands. 20mm of spacers with a 90 mm stem flipped down -7 degrees on a 54 cm frame is where I am at rigjt now and it's comfy. I have my bars rotated to look like they are a continuation of the stem and my hands are super comfy there. It's a new bike so I am constantly playing with my position for now.

I always use friction paste if either the stem or bars or both are carbon.

Too low a torque, and exactly the same would have happened with Alu bars, totally user error, but normally (as in this case) no harm done to the bars

^^^This.

Paste and torque and go for a ride.