When considering the qualities or deficiencies of any given bike model on here, inevitably someone will throw in a comment about stem being too long or short and I sit and wonder why that could affect someone’s decision to buy or not buy a bike?

I’ve seen the techno blurb on the web about trail length, fork offset, rider position, geometry blah blah.

So.. what practical differences, good or bad, does stem length make to you the rider?

I once rode a bike with a long stem, it was at least 12 years ago. It was shit for dirt jumps, bunny hops and manuals because my weight seemed to far over the front wheel.

Longer stems make for steadier feeling steering, more weight over the front end also make it easier to climb steep terrain. Downside is it can make it harder to get you weight off the back when descending

Shorter stems are faster steering and make it easier to shift your weight back which is good for descending and helps with manuals and unweighting the front of the bike. Downside can be a more cramped riding position and front end wandering on the climbs.

The fashion for slacker angles on newer mountain bike has meant that stem lengths are getting shorter, its very rare to see a trail bike with a stem longer than 90/100mm these days and 50mm is pretty common

what rich said

shorter stems are stiffer and lighter too, all other things being equal

Thanks for the info.

To add another angle, I had a very “Euro” XC hardtail that had a 120mm stem. I agree with all the downsides mentioned above – wheelies were a none starter – but I also found it rubbish climbing. The front wheel was all over the place and would often “duck-under” with me ending up on the floor. I swapped it for a 100mm which made a massive difference to every aspect of my riding.

What rich said, Good Response !

I,ve a 50mm stem and a slack head angle to compensate this,

I would say that 50mm is standard on most bikes now and one that most folks seem to plump for when swapping,

I,ve got wide bars too which seems to slow down the twitchiness and make for a more relaxed ride.

I would say that 50mm is standard on most bikes now

Really? On downhill/FR bikes maybe. The adverts/shops I look in still seem to favour something longer for trail/AM/XC. Argh, falling for the hype! 😕

I’m fairly certain that a 50mm on my Pipedream Sirius would be too short, currently got a 90mm Easton, guess that might be long for some but I’m an all dayish XC trail type rider, not really interested in riding vertical walls.

It’s probably worth mentioning that the current tendency toward short stems goes hand-in-hand with wide bars. You probably don’t want to use a short stem in conjunction with narrow bars, which would probably feel very twitchy, or a long stem in conjunction with wide bars, which probably wouldn’t go round corners at all.