Posted by: fartymarty
A.funks - thanks for the reply. Where do you measure your "effective stem length" from? Is this from the centre of grips say 66mm from the end based on a 135mm standard grip length?
I use the measurement from dead centre of the grips. However in the past I’d considered this from different points - when pushing on the bars you load them from the rear of the grips, when pulling it’s from the front. You also need to consider the angle this is measured at - I feel it should be perpendicular to the steering axis as that’s constant whilst the force vectors into the bars are from many different directions.
Posted by: Ziggy
If you really want to nerd out on this stuff check out the ebook “Dialed” by Lee McCormack. It’s a lot of info pertaining to bike fit- much of it counter to prevailing orthodoxy. He advocates grip center aligned with steering axis ( just to condense in case you don’t want to pay for it).
I discovered Lee’s book when I restarted MTBing in 2009 and followed his website etc closely for a long time. I experimented with his ideas of bike fit (RAD and RAAD) and on steering set-up and came to the conclusion that it didn’t work for me. And I mean really didn’t. I cannot stand that feeling of a zero ESL and (like many others) having moved to longer and longer bikes over the last decade I don’t think I’m suffering from Emperor’s new clothes when it comes to the pros of more reach.
I was quite reluctant to go bigger because I think he’s a good coach and has lots of great ideas on MTBing so I bought into his fit ideas for a while. I think I’ve gone from about 400mm reach to about 480mm (both at sag) on my hardtails between 2010 and now. Stack height has gone up a lot too, as that first bike had a 140mm 26” front end and my current hardtail is a 160mm 29”. I was concerned that the new bike would feel too big but it feels amazing and makes my full-sus feel a bit too short (but that’s a heavy ebike and has v long chainstays so is super stable and the wheelbases are v close anyway).