How To Adjust Your Handlebar Height
How to change your handlebar height
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Hi, my name's Al and today I'm going to show you how to change your handlebar height by
00:09 adjusting your stem.
00:12 In order to change the height of your bars and adjust your stem, there's not many tools
00:16 that you need at all.
00:18 In most cases, just some allen keys will do the job, although some stems will use torx
00:23 fasteners so you may need torx keys and we would recommend the use of a torque wrench
00:28 just to make sure everything's tightened up properly.
00:31 The amount of adjustment that you've got regarding bar height is limited by the length of steerer
00:36 tube that you've got here, so you'll have a certain number of spacers and we're basically
00:41 going to be moving those around in order to lift or lower the stem.
00:45 If you want to go any further, then you're going to need a different stem with either
00:50 a positive or a negative rise.
00:53 We wouldn't recommend using any more than 30mm worth of spacers underneath the stem
00:59 because it can put extra strain on your steerer tube which could cause it to fail.
01:05 First thing that we're going to do is we're going to loosen the stem.
01:07 So in this case it's a T30 torx key and we're undoing the pinch bolt there and that will
01:17 leave the stem free to move on the steerer tube.
01:25 With that loose, we're going to move on to the preload bolt here on the top and all that
01:32 this bolt and the top cap does is it compresses the whole bearing assembly by pushing the
01:40 stem down, preloading the bearings and getting rid of any slop in the steering.
01:46 It should only be nipped up, if it's over tightened it will crush your bearings and
01:52 the steering won't feel so good.
01:55 So with that removed and this bolt undone, you'll see I'm holding the fork.
01:59 Reason for that is it is free to drop out at any time, there's nothing holding it in
02:03 anymore other than a bit of friction.
02:09 So now we're able to remove our stem like so and we can reposition these spacers wherever
02:20 we like in order to change the height.
02:24 So what we're going to do is we're going to put all our spacers in this instance underneath
02:33 the stem, so we've got two 10s, two 5s, so 30mm, no more than that.
02:40 No bike should ever come supplied with more than that anyway really, especially with a
02:44 carbon steerer.
02:49 And we must always ensure that there's only a couple of mm gap between the top of the
02:57 steerer tube and the edge of the stem.
03:01 Any more and you'll again be putting too much stress on the steerer tube which could cause
03:06 it to fail which would obviously be horrible.
03:10 That gap there is absolutely necessary in order to take the recess here on the top cap
03:19 and to give a little bit of adjustment so as we tighten this preload bolt there's enough
03:24 space for everything to compress.
03:27 If the steerer was flush with the top of the stem it wouldn't go anywhere and you'd never
03:31 be able to adjust your headset properly.
03:34 So we're just going to nip this bolt up, check that everything's straight, you might want
03:44 to do that on the floor just to get it spot on, and then literally finger and thumb and
03:53 that should leave the bearings turning nice and smoothly with no play.
03:59 Once that's done we need to retighten the stem, we're just going to nip that up and
04:08 then we're just going to finish that off with a torque wrench.
04:11 Most stems will have a torque setting on them, in this case it's 8Nm so set your torque wrench
04:19 appropriately and tighten away.
04:27 That's that, the stem's been raised.
04:30 It's a good idea just to do some final checks before you go out on the road to double check
04:36 that adjustment of your headset so everything should be feeling nice and smooth and if you
04:41 grab the bars and try and flex them side to side then you should feel no play at all.
04:50 Again, just to make sure, stick the front wheel between your legs, try and move the
04:57 stem.
04:58 If it's all torqued up correctly it shouldn't move but it's worth checking.
05:03 So that's it, we're all done, ready to go out and hit the road.
05:06 Thanks for watching, see you next time.
05:08 [SWOOSH]