Specialized Comp Road stem

This stem is brilliant if you’re not sure about the stem angle you need and you want to experiment with different positions, or if you want to change the height of your bars throughout the season or for different events. This is particularly handy for time triallists or triathletes. It can also come in quite handy if you want your (horizontal top tube) bike to look 'just right' and you need to the stem angle to match the top tube angle – or maybe that's just me.

In the box you get 1 stem, 1 top cap and bolt, 3 shims and thankfully some instructions with adequate diagrams. Basically, both the 12 and 24 degree versions of this stem give you another 8 degrees to play with by virtue of the 0, 2 and 4 degree shims. This gives you a range of 8 to 16 and 20 to 28 degrees respectively and that’s without flipping the stem over. The ‘base stem’ comes in 6 lengths from 75 to 130mm and has a 31.8 mm (oversize) 4 bolt bar clamp.

It’s fairly straightforward to install although it took me a little while to get my head around the shims and especially which way around the top cap should go (it effectively corrects the shim offset ensuring the top cap bolt still goes in to the fork bung at the right angle). The only thing to watch out for is that the combination of stem and shim is a bit taller than a non adjustable stem, so make sure there’s enough steerer to clamp it on to properly.

Once on the bike it looks good and performs well; as well as any non adjustable stems, and certainly better than other types of adjustable stem that I’ve tried.

At 172grams (110mm version) it’s not massively light, but it’s a versatile piece of kit and has refined the position on two of my bikes. Recommended.

Verdict

Adjustable and stiff at a very agreeable price