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Some forks on special because steerer is only 185mm. I've measured my bike and I figure the forks should fit if all spacers (about 15-20mm) are removed.
Q1. Am I alright just sitting the steerer on top of the headset?
Q2, Am I likely to notice the height drop of 15-20mm?
What do you think?
Yes
Yes - probably
Spamf - MemberQ2, Am I likely to notice the height drop of 15-20mm?
Not if you use an angled stem.
Q1. Am I alright just sitting the steerer on top of the headset?
Not if you have nothing left to clamp the stem to 😉
Remove your spacers and see what it feels like.
IMO 10mm makes a huge difference.
You could offset the lower stem by a larger riser bar or stem with steep angle perhaps?
in my opinion though, 185mm is too short. Its nice to have a long steerer and it is (I think) ok to have spacers above your stem st it is nice to have the opportunity for flexability to move your stem up or down a bit.
Short steerers will also limit the available customers when you flog the fork second hand.
I bought a new set of handlebars the other day and they came with a 40mm stem. The bike was unrideable and it felt like I was steering a Sinclair C5. 70mm stem later and its superb. That was an out jutting length of just 30mm more. A small amount on the bars stem etc adds up to feel like a lot.
- A quick cheap fix (9.99) that should enable you to adapt pretty much any length steerer to fit any bike:
It's meant to be for adapting an aheadstem so that it will fit on old skool 'quill' stem threaded fork steerers, but this device will just as easily slot inside the unthreaded steerer of modern 'ahead-style' forks - effectively giving you an adjustable steerer extension. Shims are provided to account for different steerer diameters. Slot it in, tighten it up and forget about it. You can increase your effective steerer length by upto 100mm or so, or just a few mm if that's all you need. Being machined alloy it doesn't add all that much weight either..
The Edinburgh Bicycle co. do other similar stem adaptor stuff to this on the website, but this appears to be the lightest + cheapest!
I've had one of these for about 1 1/2 yr on my Pace RC36s that I bought of the 'bay - the seller had mis-measured (mis-sold?) the steerer length by about 10mm too short... Left me in a bit of a pickle that did, 'till I found this adaptor.