jonwvara 

I just finished overhauling a nice 1985 Univega Gran Turismo for a friend. The previous, possibly original stem was comically short, so I replaced it with an inexpensive dirtdrop-type Kalloy stem with the correct 100mm reach.

It looked kind of unsettling to me at first, since I've always used traditional 73 degree road stems on my own bikes. Most of them have Nitto Technomics, raised pretty high (though nowhere near the minimum insertion line).

But as I sat there looking at the bike, it suddenly occurred to me how senseless it is to use a traditional stem when you're raising the bars moderately high. The old design makes sense--it's the only way to do it, really--if you have the stem slammed all the way down to the headset, but who around here does that anymore? Not me, that's for sure.

It uses extra material (not that I sweat the grams). It's a pointy object to hit if you have the bad luck to go over the handlebars. The only time I've seriously gone over the bars--so far--a few years back, I had a bad bruise on my ribs, probably from hitting the stem on the way by. As luck would have it, that was on a beater singlespeed that had a dirtdrop stem--my only bike that had one. No way to say for sure that it would have been worse with a traditional road stem, but if I were going to select a bike to crash I would choose one with a non-pointy stem.

So guess I'm thinking about gradually switching the fleet to different stems when I find myself re-taping handlebars. I just can't think of a good reason not to, other than tradition. True, the upright stems aren't C&V, especially, but I'm pretty tolerant about parts that can just be bolted in place and restored to original by a later owner.

Am I a bad person? Maybe somebody here can give me a good reason go stick with the old-style stems after all.