prairiepedaler

I am considering installing a suspension stem on an old hard steel frame mountain bike which I use to get around in the winter. I'd prefer not to convert this bike to shock forks (not a fan of shock forks).

Riding the bike over the hardened, rough ruts of hardpack and ice transmits too much vibration to the hands. Grips are currently ergon ergonomics but this doesn't do enough. Riding position isn't all that prone, and is fairly upright.

Anyone here in a similar situation where a suspension stem worked for them? Are there particular suspension stems to be avoided?

Tomm Willians

I installed a Redshift shock stem on my gravel bike which works well. It takes a bit of experimenting to find the right combination of pads to get your “feel” but it’s not hard. I’ve since purchased a Specialized gravel bike with the Futureshock system which I like more as it’s adjustable on the fly but the Redshift is a good answer. Tire size and pressure can go a long way as well.

rosefarts

I have the redshift on my gravel bike. It’s mostly ok. Nothing brilliant but supposedly works. I can see it move and it doesn’t hurt my handling.

It’s better for chatter and just general rough road/gravel stuff. It wouldn’t help on an MTB at all.

Something to consider since it’s a winter bike. Elastomers basically suck in the cold. They get hard with bad rebound.

I’d get the widest tires you can fit on the bike before a stem.

Ironfish653

I'm using a vintage SoftRide stem on my townie/path-bike. Coil-spring, with adjustable preload and 40-50mm max travel. If you ride light in the saddle, with most of your weight on your hands and feet, it provides a good approximation of the performance of a short -travel fork.
​​​​​It would probably be the best fit for what you're looking for, compared to most of the modern comfort / gravel stems marketed today.

Here's the catch; they're not easy to find. They've been out of production for at least 20 years, and they weren't super common even back in the day. An older shop, or a co-op that traffics in used bikes might have one, but your best bet would be E-bay private seller.
A used one, though will most likely be in need of a rebuild; while the coil spring is plenty robust, the bushings in the linkage are prone to wearing out and causing slop(especially the poly bushings in the steel/composite stems like mine)
You can find industrial bushings that may work, but all the "factory" spares have long since disappeared

veganbikes

Don't expect a ton from the stem but a Kinekt stem would give you a better ride and a longer lasting stem. Yes the RedShift is a nicer looking stem but the Kinekt is a better performer. I would certainly put the widest tires you can fit on the bike and run them with as low a pressure as possible. However a proper suspension fork is going to help out the most. Maybe you have used very low end forks or haven't adjusted them or something odd but a suspension fork is the way to go. Get a nice Rockshox Judy Gold and you will have a solid performer that is easy to work with and will give you a good ride.

If you are truly stuck on not using a proper fork that will help greater than everything else, I would look at a titanium handlebar in addition to everything else but I wouldn't get hung up on that. You could also get a custom made steel fork that could give a little extra springiness but that is silly when a suspension fork will work many wonders.

Ironfish653

Going to jump back in with thoughts on tires and grips, which are far and away easier than trying to suss out the perfect “suspension that’s not suspension” solution

It seems to me that around here, there’s a lot of under-tire-ing and over-inflating: taking a 26” bike and fitting 1.5” tires (40mm) and running them at 60-70 psi, like it’s a road racing bike.
If you’re using an old MTB as your utility bike, stick the biggest tires on it that will fit between the frame rails. A 2.1” tire has 5x the air volume of a 25mm, and more than twice the surface area: you can run far lower tire pressure without the drag losses from running low pressure on a skinny tire. All that volume also gives you a lot more a lot more cushion to absorb impacts with.
You also don’t have to run heavy cruiser tires or aggressive full-knobby DH skins either: there are a lot of 26” BMX tires that feature low profile tread patterns that do really well on mixed, uneven surfaces

Grips, too; I’ve never really been a fan of Ergon or other paddle-style grips, or any of the ones that use a big flat slab of padding. I understand they’re supposed to offer a lot of support, but I guess I don’t ride in a way where that paddle hits my hands to make any difference

I always preferred a chunky, moto- pattern grips, like the classic OURYs, in a softer rubber compound. Some of the modern, ribbed grips like PNW Loam XL have a good combination of grip and cushion, with a really nice hand feel.
Some guys are even going old school with (silicone) foam grips like ESI “Chunky” which is both plush and sticky, but reportedly short lived in off-road environments

Trakhak

I second the recommendation to find a SoftRide suspension stem---preferably the later aluminum version. They work. Back around the late 1990s, there were very few SoftRide-sponsored pro MTB racers, but, amazingly, two of them won (respectively) the World Championships (single-day race) and the World Cup (cumulative year-long points from best race placings).

SoftRide's stem is lighter in weight than suspension forks, easier and cheaper to service, and immune to dirt infiltration. Yes, there are modern suspension stems, but all the ones I've seen use a single-pivot design, so your grips rotate downward every time the stem articulates from a hit. Very annoying. The SoftRide parallelogram design keeps the grips and bar level.

Minor disadvantages: suspension travel was a function of stem length, with the shorter stems having considerably less travel; you had to check the pivot bolts every once in a while and snug up the bolts if necessary---although it only took one Allen wrench and 30 seconds to do the adjustment; the only way to control the damping was to tighten or loosen the pivot bolts; the pivot bushings wore out eventually (and are probably unobtainable by now--but, come to think of it, though, they might have been off-the-shelf bushings and might still be available from industrial suppliers).

Major disadvantage: you bike doesn't look enough like a motorcycle.

I used one on my off-road bike for about four years and then sold the bike. Still kicking myself that I didn't keep the stem. It's a shame that they went out of production when they did. Given a few more years of development, they might have become a real presence in the market, like tubeless wheel/tire setups.

From this page:

rosefarts

The interesting thing about the Softride stem is that there are currently tons of them on eBay. Mostly with cheaper prices than a new Redshift.

If you’re not afraid of the potential curveballs to service them, they’re currently very available.

2old

I really enjoyed MTB with Softride stem(s) back in the day, but someone offered me too much for them and they were sold. Most of the ones on ebay are the 1" quill type and not usable for most modern bikes unless the individual owns a Rivendell (or others that I'm not aware of).

rosefarts

He did say old steel hardtail. There’s a chance.

RB1-luvr

ooo, those gold Diacompes. <3

Korina

I'll second the tires option. I have Maxxis DTHs on my steed, at about 45psi, and they're quite cushy, even on chunky pavement. They're also quite a bit lighter than a suspension post.

Macguyver909

There is a modern German made, parallelogram style, elastomer spring, stem called the Vecnum freeQence. It is also stiffness adjustable with an allen wrench (no elastomers to buy /replace to tune it). They are expensive ~300$, and they won't ship to the USA, but they will ship to Canada..wink, wink. I just got one, and am still in the testing stages. I have been riding it in the cold, and the stem still seems fairly tight. (lots of stiction) It does soften the larger hits but it's not nearly as sensitive as big low pressure tires.

https://www.vecnum.com/en/products/freeqence

Trakhak

If I held the patents for the SoftRide suspension stem, I'd hire a patent lawyer to determine whether the German stem is actionably close to the SoftRide design.

That stem looks great. What feels like stiction may be deliberate, to keep the stem from bottoming out abruptly at the limit of its travel. Either that, or the elastomer preload setting recommended for your body weight/riding conditions should be adjusted a bit to accommodate the increase in the stiffness of the elastomers in cold weather. (There's no damping adjustment, apparently.)

A professional road team should test the stem for possible use in, e.g., Paris-Roubaix.

Wildwood 

If there are a bunch of the 1" ones on thBay with springs, they probably all squeek as loudly as mine did/does. I did not like the feeling of bouncy hands and took it off my 90's rigid mtb.

Regarding the use by racers, they have been there, done that, rejected.

Ironfish653

That one looks absolutely identical to the coil-spring KINEKT stem; which actually IS the product of a couple ex-SoftRide engineers


It took a lot of adjustment to get mine where I find it acceptable; and then it's on gravel/path bike, not really for trail work.
Compared to some of the first -gen suspension forks, it was a valid option, especially as a refit on the geometry of that era XC bike; but then it still works best if you treat it like a cushioned rigid, rather than a "properly" suspended bike

Trakhak

SoftRide stems failed the way Suntour failed (and, less obviously, Campagnolo failed) when Shimano came to dominate the market.

That said, history is littered with examples of products that failed despite their demonstrable superiority to their rivals. Beta versus VHS springs to mind, but there are many other examples.

I had that conversation a few decades ago, with a fellow bike shop employee who insisted that suspension forks were superior to suspension stems. When I pointed out that, during the last year that SoftRide sponsored their few riders (versus the scores sponsored by suspension fork manufacturers), two SoftRide racers won the Worlds and the World Cup, he had no rebuttal.

Obviously a matter of taste, but I always liked the way my SoftRide stem-equipped bike rode more than I liked bikes with suspension forks. As I noted earlier, the main hit against SoftRide was that it didn't have that motorcycle macho thing going for it that suspension forks have. And fair enough. Appearances matter.

Wildwood 

A dog of a product.
Superior design = NOT
(from a guy who still owns a bike with Softride beam)

Ironfish653

*Also a SoftRide beam owner*

Compared to any modern fork, no doubt; but consider what it was up against in '91-'92:. The Rock Shok RS-1, the prototype Manitou, the Scott Unishock? That was a pretty fair weight penalty for maybe 50mm of travel. Also, despite all the innovation, the state of MTB tech was a lot less refined than it is now.

Once you get to the MAG-21, it's all over; no stem can provide the performance benefits of a proper, tunable fork, along with frame geometry designed to incorporate the fork from the factory.

I think, had the design survived a little longer, possibly by selling out to one of the bigger mfgrs, you might see more SoftRide -style stems on some of the comfort/ dual-sport hybrids, instead of the heavy, junky low-end RST forks they slap on everything. ​​​​​​

Wildwood 

Mine (pic above) may have been an early version (1991-ish?) and had but a single spring on a longer stem. Squeaked like hades from a few months after install - on any trails = totally squishy; not bad on straight flat trails or gravel roads.

I agree 100% w/ @Ironfish653 about level of technology. Gary Fisher catalog shows very first suspension fork in '90 or '91.

Let me look for more pics

thumpism 

I put a Softride on my wife's Peugeot MTB (now sold) and still have another somewhere. Also a couple of Girvin Flexstems. Rode one of those briefly. The two types have different actions; the Girvin is a single pivot so it rotates up and down while the Softride is a parallelogram. I used the Flexstem with drop bars and that felt a little weird riding on the hoods so far ahead of the pivot but it did work.

rosefarts

The further you get ahead of the pivot, the more “travel”.

Redshift even advertises longer travel on longer stems. Same compression distance, just a longer lever arm.

I wonder if the OP is going to give us an update?

prairiepedaler

Hello, thank you to contributors for the input on the stem. The thought about cold and elastomers echos my own thinking - way too cold up here in Winter to use them.

Long gone now, but I had the opportunity to buy a Mongoose Hilltopper which had a (Girvin?) Flextem on it. I presume that one would've been an elastomer type too. The target bike where the stem is intended is a Kuwahara Sage. For 3 season riding I think a suspension stem wouldn't be neccessary, but for winter riding quite welcome I think.

I'll check a few of the local coops for starters and then go from there. Last resort would be an auction buy.

JanMM

I used a Girvin Flexstem (and a suspension seatpost) on a 90’s Cannondale hybrid that was my main ride for a decade. Combination helped soften the ride on the roads that I rode on. Did a lot of suburban/urban/suburban commuting in those days. Plus country road riding.
Still have a few leftover elastomers but can’t vouch for their integrity.

t2p

third vote for the tires option

I have 2.15 DTHs on one of my old bikes - nice ride

2.3 DTH is also available