The "fit" threads on here crack me up.

I had my fit pretty close to perfect myself. I went in for a Retul fit just to double check my work. They did a few very minor adjustments and I feel a substantial improvement. A much bigger improvement than any $175 upgrade would've made on the bike. I'd happily pay someone for the improvement I saw and to not have to spend endless time tinker with fit and just enjoy riding my bike.

If you don't know what youre trying to accomplish, but want to fiddle with you stem / fit regardless, fine.

just do two things:

1) carefully record the current size and position of everything before moving anything.

2) get a cheap 90, 100 and 120 stem. $60 more or less. Now play with them and see the differences they make. Add and remove spacers.

then when you get the fit you want, or when you get fit by an actual fitter, you can get a "nice" stem in the size that your trial and error has indicated.

And the value of your statement is ??? People are making statements because they want to learn.

I'm pretty sure that he means the "why should I pay for a fit I can adjust the stem myself" type posts.

As UMD stated, that is what I was getting at. Sorry if it came off in a bad tone. :)

You can't fit someone over the internet. There is a reason Pro teams fly the best fitters half way across the globe to fit the team. People tend to underestimate the value of a good fit of a bicycle to the biomechanics of a human.

I was the first one to post in this thread and tried to be helpful to the OP.

Someone asked for a pic, so here is the most recent:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._6643650_n.jpg

+1

It has to have you on it to be useful...

Pfft. lol. I wondered what the hell you could discern just from a pic of the bike but what do I know. I'll work on it.

I'm actually curious about how stem length changes handling, vis-a-vis other ways of obtaining the same fit.

There are 5 points in space that define the bike fit - two feet, two hands, and a buttocks. With the buttocks and feet located, you can get to the hand points in the X axis via changing the length of the top tube or the length of the stem.

In a straight line, the relative length of the top tube and stem are irrelevant. But as soon as you put steer angle into the equation, things change.

To oversimplify, steering with a zero length stem is a "twist" (like a corkscrew) where a long stem is a "traverse" (like a boat tiller)

So how does that change handling? What's the "so what"?

I'd love to see whatever the cycle analogue of the SAE's paper is on this.

BTW, I've done the whole fitting thing a couple of times and think it was time well spent.

DG

Oh nm I did read this right when I posted a picture of just the bike.

if you're buying a road bike from a cruiser bike shop, expect a load of fail to be delivered.

As I mentioned the guy only stocks cruisers because his shop is literally 100yds from the C&O Canal in MD and his buyers are typically older folks that like to ride on the canal. Every time I'm in the shop at least 5 guys 60+ pop in and have something they need, cruiser related. Plus with the shop only being 600sq ft and at least half of that being his workspace, it doesn't leave much more room for stocking bikes. If he doesn't know much about bikes he sure knows how to build them. I know he has one hell of a sweet Colnago C50. I remember I went in with a guy that races and he almost passed out when he saw it. My buddy said he figured that bike cost about $11-15k with everything on it. I'll have to ask him about his build when I go in next week.

That's cause Colnago charges like $6k for the paint on those :p

:D Yeah that's what I've read now that I've delved more into Road biking. I know it doesn't mean he's a good fitter but I have to give the guy credit for going balls out on a sport that he's all about.

Went in and talked to the LBS owner and he said that he wouldn't change from the 110mm since it provides a good fit from what he saw. Apparently my seat moved slightly back so once it pushed forward it felt better. After looking around on FUJI's site today, researching my OEM stem, I noticed that my bike is pictured with a black stem and I really like the look. So now I'm thinking that I'm going to grab another 110mm stem but this time in black. I found a nice looking one for cheap and it's listed at a 35mm and my stock is a 40mm, is it ok to replace it? Never swapped a stem before so I wanted to make sure before I did it.

Found this while doing a search for 2.0's:

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...baix-1.0-parts

Apparently I'm not the only one to notice the diff stem and seat post. Not a big deal thought, great first road bike. :D