So looking at a mega am frame in large. Coming from a medium cove gspot which is a lot shorter than the mega. I am running a 70mm stem on the cove, but that would give a very long reach on a large frame I think. Can you just put a 35mm stem on any long frame or does the frame have to be designed for a very short stem?
To a certain extent it doesn't really matter what the frame is designed for if it fits better with a shorter stem thats fine. Obviously if your running a super steep head angle putting a 35mm stem on will speed up the steering to ridiculous levels and will probably be dangerous. The Mega will be absolutely fine and was probably developed with a stem that short in mind.
BITD a lad I knew ran a zero length stem on a Jack Flash. That was a tad twitchy.
You can put whatever size stem on that you feel like. What that will do to the handling and how it makes the bike feel will be entirely personal.
Is the large Mega your size? Or could it be too big? Personally 35mm stem on anything is going to massively different to a 70mm stem. It's going to feel wandery and unweighted over the front wheel.
Don't try making a frame fit you by drastically changing components. They should be for fine fettling.
I've fitted a 50mm stem to everything I've owned for the last 15 years - never had any problems. Now they're readily available I may switch to a 35mm.
As others said, -35mm (70mm to 35mm) will have a big effect on the speed of the handling.
I haven't found it makes the front 'wandery', just faster.
I have a racey XC hard tail that was an inch too long for me. I swapped the 90mm stem for a 50mm and the steering was fast enough to make me nervous. A wider bar evened it up.
It'll be fine but Don't forget that often very short stems are twinned with much wider bars which supposedly helps reign in the steering speed.
50mm stems have been my default for years too, even before they were popular and bikes started to get slacker.
I'm 5ft11 and used to run the old mega in medium size with a 60mm stem. I now have a large mega AM 27.5 with a 50mm stem, reach is 40mm longer, fits me perfectly. My old mega just feels wrong now.
Sounds doable so far, thanks for the replies 🙂
It would be a large mega am which should fit me fine. I'm 6'1" ish and the medium cove was just a touch too small. The 70mm stem would be off my cove build so just wandering whether to spend 70 quid on a hope 35mm stem before even trying the 70mm stem.
I changed from a 50mm to a 70mm on the cove to slow down the steering a bit but sold the 50mm stem 🙁