This Unusual Stem Aims To Change Mountain Biking And It Actually Could

Hello internet and welcome to part two of my ode to high front ends. Last time we left it with a highly produced and quite slick trailer of what's going to be featuring prominently in this video, the raised reverse stem. Now, before we get to that, I hope you don't mind if I just take a moment to riffle through some fan mail. It's always important to get a snapshot into the viewer's mind as well as some very useful feedback. Although normally it just goes on about silly continuity errors you wouldn't even notice. Dear Mr. Quinney, you're an idiot, a loser, a litigious lemon, an absolute adolescent, and a disappointing doughnut, a true no hoper. It goes on like this for several paragraphs. You have the integrity, consistency, and bite of diarrhea trying to stick to a freshly oiled baking tray. I don't even know what that means. Now we're getting to it. Mr. Quinney, when I watched your assessment of what the next generation of bikes would look like, which by the way, seemed totally bereft of any real technical insight, you forgot to mention that long rear ends make all bikes horrid and almost impossible to maneuver, which is funny because we haven't actually released that video yet and we're recording this one. It's a very useful narrative device nonetheless. Yours in sport, Brian Park, but I thought he was on our side. Tom, oh no, this isn't fan mail. This is from HR. Last time then we left it saying high stack is the absolute best and it's going to solve all of the world's problems. Without taking a hacksaw and glue gun to our frame, how can we use what we know about geometry, about weight distribution, and component choice to give us some of those elements on a bike that perhaps doesn't have a particularly high stack? That's where we come to the raised reverse stem. Before we get out to the trails to test this thing, I want to see how much difference it actually offers in terms of dimensions compared to my standard setup and if there's any way we can replicate the position it gives you without using something so very different. Here we have my bike and we have strapped it so it's nice and secure and messed around with the handlebars. S, that is my standard position. It's also the highest that I can run it on my steerer with a 42 mil stem and a 35 mil rise bar. L is the lowest position. You can actually see how much effective reach you gain because you go down and along. The next thing was fitting the reverse raised stem. You can see that it goes massively up and backwards, but for comparison, we thought we'd fit a 76 mil rise bar from Protaper. As you can see, it's got a very comparable height, but it's further forward. Then we got thinking, what if we reversed that 40 mil stem that we equipped the handlebar to backwards and combined it with the 76 mil rise? Then suddenly it's on the same vertical plane, if not the horizontal one. In some ways, this stem combines maybe two thoughts that people normally wouldn't explore, be it an ultra high rise bar or even a stem on backwards. It does offer something then very different. There's a reason we don't tend to run mega rise bars. What's this stem going to be like in the real world? Mr. Park then does raise some very good points, especially those about long chainstays. Is it true? Does a long rear end make everything worse? It's complicated. Let's go outside to understand how we can alleviate some of the issues associated with long rear ends with a high front, maybe even a stem like this, as well as comparing this to my normal setup. As we discussed in the last video, longer rear ends shuffle the rider's weight forward, expressing more of it on that front wheel. Now, this can make initiating some moves a bit more difficult, such as bunny hops or front wheel lifts. That's because our center of gravity is basically further forward and away from the center of the thing that we're trying to pivot around. However, this can come back to you because as you can imagine, the further the path is away from the center, the more distance, say 10 degrees of rotation, is going to have. Yes, they can be harder to initiate, but the balance point, that window, is going to be greater. All of this to say that it takes a present and active rider to get the most out of a bike with a long rear end. It's also worth considering what we're trying to do and how we go about lifting the front. It's not like we just pull on the handlebars because that would be like trying to jump higher by just pulling really hard on your shoelaces. We lift the front wheel by executing basic maneuvers that are based on moving our center of gravity as well as preloading the bike, but how can we make that easier, even with a long rear end? One of the ways to make these movements easier could be, of course, to go to a higher front end. That's because the things that we already know, a higher front puts more of the rider's weight towards the back of the bike. It also means that our hands and shoulders are already that bit closer to getting on that balance point. From my own personal experience, I would say that a higher front lets me drive underneath and scoop the front of the bike should I want to lift that front wheel. Now, I said in the last video that I really like that long, I think it's a 446 rear end of the Spire. Maybe it could be the perfect balancing act with that very high, very large stem. We saw what a different position it can give you. What I'm going to do is do a lap of a trail that's a good mix of a lot of different attributes. It's got some steeper parts, it's got some techier parts, some punchy climbs, some good turns, and some steeper sections. I'll do a lap on my normal setup and then we'll put on the stem and see how they compare and hopefully get a good idea of its strengths and weaknesses. Let's see how we get on. This bike has a 630-mil-ish stack with quite a big 35-mil rise bar. It's weird to think of it as the wildly low option. Coming up through some of that, I'm going to try and keep open-minded, but I was very thankful to have that low front end for all that grip and balance as you're trying to scramble up something slippy. Everything just feels like it melds together beautifully there in terms of the geometry of this bike and the balance that I want, especially on steeper turns. It feels absolutely bloody amazing. Just got to think, open mind Henry, there might be something better, but this, I just love this bike. I just love, love, love this bike. Now, we know that bikes with a more rearward weight bias do better on fast committing sections of trail that are quite steep. That's one of the reasons I love this bike, because it's slack, but it's balanced. It's high enough without pulling you forward, but also low enough you can really control the front. I love this bike. I think it's got great balance. Can it be improved upon? Maybe having those high bars will actually let me put my weight on the front in a way I've never previously known. Let's fit the stem, the big birther, and go for another lap. Because this front is so high, you're really having to fight not to go off the back. That requires the core strength that I personally just don't have. When it isn't so steep in terms of climbs, you're not relying on your skeletal structure for support. You're actually relying on a lot of core muscles. Then when it's flatter, your triceps are primed and pushing on the front the whole time. I find it quite exhausting on tight turns that my hands are hitting my knees. I wouldn't say I have that much control, but maybe on the descent, it's all going to make sense and it's going to all begin to justify itself. What we need with bike design is balance. I talk about that a lot. What I mean is both axles are preloaded with the rider's weight, and then they can add and subtract as needed to suit the situation. The problem is with something so rearward is that yes, on certain terrain, it's great, but it means that even when you're trying to preload, you have to deal with a small amount of terrain that's maybe a little bit lumpy or bumpy, and then you have to unweight and then weight back on just as you would normally without even thinking about it. This sort of small correction turns into lurches. That lurch is very disconcerting, not least because there isn't that much grip on the front wheel. Sometimes you can either get a massive twitch or kind of feel like it's washing a bit, either fall back, right, left. It's probably good on steep, smooth trails, but on techier sections, I wouldn't say I've felt confident, the most confident I've ever felt today. When it comes to turning a bike, a low front end can kind of be high risk, high reward. Now, I was coming pretty steadily through there. I'm not going to use the B word, but I certainly wasn't going quickly, but that's probably as fast as I could go. It felt relatively in control and smooth, but I couldn't rail the turn, so to speak, if I ever could. High front ends aren't half bad for some things, but sometimes they can also feel a little bit lifeless. So that's a couple of laps aboard the stem. I have got some thoughts, some good, some bad, if I'm honest. I also really, really, really want some pizza, so we're going to do that back to the studio and reflect. So that is a day of back-to-back testing against this, let's face it, unconventional stem compared to my normal one. Now, I have ridden this before, got a fair few miles in on it, but haven't done back-to-back on the same trail like that before, and it was quite startling. How to put it? I think this stem represents some of the things that we already knew. There's a reason I don't want a super high rise bar on my bike, and that's because a lack of precision, control, grip on the front coming through the Y-axis can sometimes, when you've got not any longer to travel, it can sometimes feel quite vague. It can feel quite unsettled on the front, and also we preload the front quite a lot, even when we're thinking weight back and we're really driving our weight through the bottom bracket, we do have a preloaded front, and that isn't the case with this. You really can just ride on the rear wheel. It almost feels a bit like a unicycle that's got a stabilizer, it's there merely for balance. That can be really good in terms of lifting up the front. Even today riding, there were some sections that were maybe on the exit of turns and I just wanted to go light on the front to get over a route. That sort of thing, it is pretty good, but the grip is inconsistent on the front. You can find balance with anything. You've seen that stacking rocks on the beach. There is a balance point in this. The problem is it's quite a narrow band, and then if you do anything that unsettles it on the front, so maybe that can be through grip or even hitting like a little patch or a little step, that then means that you slip. When you slip, because you're so high up and you're so lent and your lean angle is quite extreme, you really feel like you fall, which can be quite disconcerting. If you have so much of your weight over the rear, that lack of preload on the front means that as you weight the front, you don't always do so exactly even, but normally there's enough grip and control to kind of mute this out, but that can kind of turn into a bit of a lurching motion. Elements of wheel flop weren't so present, and that's because, to be honest, there probably isn't enough weight on the front wheel to really punish you for it. Is this something that I'm glad has been made? Absolutely. I commend the thinking. I think it's great to experiment, and if people like it, more power to them. I think for people that maybe have some issues in terms of getting their bike to fit and making it comfortable, that's absolutely great. For me and the trails I ride, it's not for me. Maybe you could design a frame around it. Maybe this is just the first step. Who knows? However, on this bike, I've been quite consistent, including the last video, that I wouldn't mind it to be a bit steeper and a bit higher. This isn't the answer, but like I said, kudos for making it. It's just not for me, and I think that's about all I can say.