Ritchey C260 stem review and comment
Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 10:01 pm
There's a previous topic, but this is a little different so I started a new thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=125176&p=1068272&hilit=c260#p1068272
I just bought and installed a Ritchey WCS C260 stem. It's a very nice looking and manufactured piece of hardware and is within the advertised weight. My 100mm stem is right at 105 grams.
I like the way it looks, it matches up fine with my Ritchey seat post, even though the seat post is carbon weave and the stem is aluminum. I'm not super compulsive about matching seatposts, stems and bars, but since i needed both a new seatpost and stem, and found both on sale from US sellers (as opposed to the always "great" pricing for potential counterfeits from Asia), I decided to match them up this time. I already had a set of beautiful new/take-off Easton EC90 SLX3 bars that were practically given to me, so I didn't go whole hog and spend another $200 just to match the three pieces.
The installation on my Easton handlebars was a little fussy, and the clamp bolts are different than most, so I almost decided to send the stem back and replace it with an older conventional design WCS 4 axis stem.
As most of you know, this stem has a very unique handlebar clamp with the stem body circling the bar by 260 degrees and a correspondingly much smaller faceplate. The 260 degree design means you can't simply remove the face plate and install the bars directly onto the stem - the opening's too small. You have to insert the bars at a point where the bar diameter is smaller (i.e. away from the center 31.7mm "bulge), and slide the bar into the stem. This means that if you're not starting with a bare bar, you have to remove the handlebar tape at least a little ways.
In the case of my Easton bars, they are a little ovalized on the tops and therefore won't fit into the 260 degree stem opening. I had to remove the tape down past the levers and actually remove the levers in order to get to an area on the bars that was round and therefore small enough to fit into the stem opening. With bars with round tops, this wouldn't be an issue.
In addition, I installed the stem onto the bike before installing the handlebars, and with the cables the way they are on my bike, making the maneuvers to get the bars around the curves to the stem clamping area was a pain. In retrospect, this would have been very simple if I'd simply removed the stem from the bike and moved it around the bar curves, but I was just too impatient at the time.
So, the installation of the new stem with existing bars was virtually the same as the procedure for installing bars onto a quill stem.
That kind of irritated me, but after I was done, I figured, oh well, I won't have to do that again, at least for a while.
Then the second issue: the clamp bolts are T20 star/torx bolts, not the common M3 or M4 hex/allen. From reading online critiques, I understand why Ritchey made them torx bolts: I guess they were having problems with the hex/allen bolts stripping out when tightening even to the low 5nM spec. The star/torx heads are much more resistant to this.
The ONLY problem with this is that every other single bolt on my bike is hex/allen and my multi tool (or any I've ever seen) doesn't have a T20 tool on it. One of my multitools has a T30 (maybe T25?) tool on it, but not a T20. So now, if I want a complete set of bike tools in my saddle bag, I have to carry an individual T20 tool of some sort - and I haven't found a tiny one yet.
I've been thinking of swapping the T20 bolts for a similar thread hex head bolt and think I found some locally (M3) that have the same thread pitch and diameter.
Anyway, like other Ritchey stems I've owned, this is a really nice unit and the company's weight claim is accurate. I can't say I'm completely sold on the necessity for the 260 degree design, but it does make sense, at least in an amateur, non-engineer's view. On the other hand, I used an Easton 26.0 bar for many years with a super lightweight Syntace stem with a two piece bar clamp that was supposed to be a no-go for a CF bar, but I always carefully tightened it in a pattern. used carbon assembly paste and torqued to spec and never damaged the bar. So I'm not sure if with this OS Easton bar, the stem design isn't over kill, not justifying the installation hassle.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=125176&p=1068272&hilit=c260#p1068272
I just bought and installed a Ritchey WCS C260 stem. It's a very nice looking and manufactured piece of hardware and is within the advertised weight. My 100mm stem is right at 105 grams.
I like the way it looks, it matches up fine with my Ritchey seat post, even though the seat post is carbon weave and the stem is aluminum. I'm not super compulsive about matching seatposts, stems and bars, but since i needed both a new seatpost and stem, and found both on sale from US sellers (as opposed to the always "great" pricing for potential counterfeits from Asia), I decided to match them up this time. I already had a set of beautiful new/take-off Easton EC90 SLX3 bars that were practically given to me, so I didn't go whole hog and spend another $200 just to match the three pieces.
The installation on my Easton handlebars was a little fussy, and the clamp bolts are different than most, so I almost decided to send the stem back and replace it with an older conventional design WCS 4 axis stem.
As most of you know, this stem has a very unique handlebar clamp with the stem body circling the bar by 260 degrees and a correspondingly much smaller faceplate. The 260 degree design means you can't simply remove the face plate and install the bars directly onto the stem - the opening's too small. You have to insert the bars at a point where the bar diameter is smaller (i.e. away from the center 31.7mm "bulge), and slide the bar into the stem. This means that if you're not starting with a bare bar, you have to remove the handlebar tape at least a little ways.
In the case of my Easton bars, they are a little ovalized on the tops and therefore won't fit into the 260 degree stem opening. I had to remove the tape down past the levers and actually remove the levers in order to get to an area on the bars that was round and therefore small enough to fit into the stem opening. With bars with round tops, this wouldn't be an issue.
In addition, I installed the stem onto the bike before installing the handlebars, and with the cables the way they are on my bike, making the maneuvers to get the bars around the curves to the stem clamping area was a pain. In retrospect, this would have been very simple if I'd simply removed the stem from the bike and moved it around the bar curves, but I was just too impatient at the time.
So, the installation of the new stem with existing bars was virtually the same as the procedure for installing bars onto a quill stem.
That kind of irritated me, but after I was done, I figured, oh well, I won't have to do that again, at least for a while.
Then the second issue: the clamp bolts are T20 star/torx bolts, not the common M3 or M4 hex/allen. From reading online critiques, I understand why Ritchey made them torx bolts: I guess they were having problems with the hex/allen bolts stripping out when tightening even to the low 5nM spec. The star/torx heads are much more resistant to this.
The ONLY problem with this is that every other single bolt on my bike is hex/allen and my multi tool (or any I've ever seen) doesn't have a T20 tool on it. One of my multitools has a T30 (maybe T25?) tool on it, but not a T20. So now, if I want a complete set of bike tools in my saddle bag, I have to carry an individual T20 tool of some sort - and I haven't found a tiny one yet.
I've been thinking of swapping the T20 bolts for a similar thread hex head bolt and think I found some locally (M3) that have the same thread pitch and diameter.
Anyway, like other Ritchey stems I've owned, this is a really nice unit and the company's weight claim is accurate. I can't say I'm completely sold on the necessity for the 260 degree design, but it does make sense, at least in an amateur, non-engineer's view. On the other hand, I used an Easton 26.0 bar for many years with a super lightweight Syntace stem with a two piece bar clamp that was supposed to be a no-go for a CF bar, but I always carefully tightened it in a pattern. used carbon assembly paste and torqued to spec and never damaged the bar. So I'm not sure if with this OS Easton bar, the stem design isn't over kill, not justifying the installation hassle.