What’s in the stand today…

This sweet old Otis Guy was in for a triple conversion a while back. It’s here now to get a wee bit taller stem. The problem getting taller stems for these old bikes is that there ain’t a lot of options, especially when the parameters are: 1″ quill and it’s got to be the same style as the original.

Well, Nitto does make this really nice tall 1″ quill stem. The folks over at Rivendell are quite fond of them. However, it’s really tall and this is a short frame (read, head tube is shorter than the Nitto stem’s quill). The owner only wanted to get a stem that was about an inch taller, but it also had to be able to be dropped back down when his son visited and rode his old bike. Even with the Nitto buried, it was still too tall for both of them.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I chopped 30mm out of the Nitto stem, got the angle filed just right, cut down the stem bolt, and it went together perfectly. Had a bit of a scare, though. The stem bolt only has a certain amount of threads and I almost thought I had cut too much out of the stem so that the stem bolt’s threads would bottom into the wedge, not letting me fully secure the stem. Luckily, I did measure everything twice and it all fit nicely.

This one’s too short. This one’s too tall.