KCNC SC Wing stem

It's hard to make a Carbon stem as stiff as an alloy one at the same weight. It gets harder when KCNC are knocking out units like this that are sub-100g and are still plenty stiff. Some of that weight saving comes in the form of some rather fiddly bolts so there's a bit of an ease-of-use trade off

We had the 90mm incarnation of the SC Wing which weighed in at an almost worrying 96g, but fitted to a bike with some standard bars it proved itself to be more than stiff enough to deal with the daily grind. Constructed from the same T-7451 alloy as the SC Force handlebars, it's machined to save a few grams and supplied with 3mm Titanium allen bolts which are a bit of a fiddle to tighten and would be easy to round if you don't have a high quality set of keys. They're coated in Ti-prep too, which makes them squeak and stick when you're tightening them, but that's better than having them seize later on.

I was sceptical as to whether they'd save that much weight, but the scales of truth showed they were only 11g to 22g for some standard bolts, so fair enough: it's the difference between sub 100g and not. A more standard 110mm length does sneak over the 100g mark – just – but it's still a very, very light stem and not particularly expensive. If low weight is your ultimate aim then this is definitely a stem to consider, but it doesn't have the wider appeal of some of the other KCNC stuff.

Verdict

Super-light alloy stem that'll appeal to budget-conscious weight weenies