Anyone have a good way to determine stem length without having to go to a fitter first? Just a ballpark way.
Anyone have a good way to determine stem length without having to go to a fitter first? Just a ballpark way.
“Accurate ballpark”…hmmm. Well I can give you a “definite maybe” which could be “fairly accurate” but may only lead to a “partial conclusion”.
For a road bike, one old school trick is to put your elbow on the tip
of the saddle - from there your fingertips (hand outstretched flat
like a karate chop) should just brush the back of the handlebar (the top horizontal part of the bar), or maybe fall a little behind it for a more
stretched out position. That measurement is obviously affected by
where you put the saddle though, so you’d want to do something like
knee over pedal spindle first, if you are really starting from scratch.
If you’ve got dinosaur forearms or ape forearms, it’s going to be off a bit as well.
Another, not necessarily incompatible measure would be to sit securely
with your hands deep in the drops - the top of the bar should obscure your view of the front hub.
But again, that’s all old road bike stuff - doesn’t much apply to a
triathlon bike, aero bars, forward geometry etc. so it depends on
what bike and what sort of components you are talking about.