Hello,
After not using it for some time, I dragged the road bike out of the garage to ride it into work today. Really enjoyed the speed of it and reckon I might do a bit of road riding this winter round the local lanes.

However, one of the reasons I've not ridden it for some time is that I'm not entirely happy with the 'fit' of it.

Problem is I'm tall and a bit of an odd shape (long legs, short body). Consequently although the frame is the correct seat tube length, the top tube + stem length feels too long, like I'm stretched too far forwards.

Does anyone know any rules of thumb I should be using when deciding what stem to buy to make the distance between bars and stem shorter (saddle is quite a long way forwards already) ?

failing that, anyone know of any online resources offering this guidance?

taaaaaaa

For the stem I'd just try and guess how much closer you want the bars and see what's available. I've seen road stems at 90mm.

I have a similar problem to you and I found raising the height of the bars made as much comfort as bringing them closer with a shorter stem. You could simply flip your stem or rearrange the spacers.

I had a bike fitting recently on my road and mtb bikes.
Fitting worked by doing shoes/cleat postion first, then saddle height, then fore-aft adjustment on saddle and then finally stem and bars. On the road bike I always felt too far strecthed forward before but after putting the saddle up and putting on a variable angle stem bringing the bars up and back a little things have improved no end and made massive step forward on by back's comfort. The cleat, saddle height/saddle fore/aft is a fairly exact science (which you can find dotted around the web) but the reach thing seemed less so.

Bit of light reading:
http://www.cyclemetrics.com/Pages/Docs/6-BikeFitting/LemondSystem/fit_formulas.htm

There is a webiste around somewhere for fitting based on measurements, but I can't find it at the moment.

Top tube is the culprit on roadbikes.

Get a bike fit then buy your next bike or change the stem to bodge it.

Are you in shape?

Loose the gut, get flexible and strengthen your mid section.

If you don't get use to it after that or you're fit already then you need a shorter top tube frame or new bike.

My training bike is 58cm and my toy 60cm but the difference is there and I fit the bigger bike when in shape lol.

Don't drop the front stem lower than 90mm as the handling will be too twitchy quick at speed/decents.

Also see if you have the stem pointing up etc.

Hope it's just a case of getting used to it. 🙂

Cheers all, useful info there.

Zaskar, No problem with fitness, but yes I could have made more of an effort to make sure the bike fitted properly before buying. However it was ridiculously cheap and only online. Guess I can buy anther frame if the darkside bug bites more!

I have the same peoblem to some extent on mtbs – all my frames are short in the top tube and have short stems.

Rough starter for ten is that the front wheel axle should be obscured by the handlebars when you're 'on the hoods'.

I'm much the same shape as you (long legs short body) and I've found dropping to a 90mm stem and using short & shallow bars helps. Doesn't mess up the handling either.

competitivecyclist.com has an online fit calculator – takes a bit of time to get all the measurements in, I used the figures it give to set up my road bike and it's only needed slight tweaking to get me really comfy on the bike