More on the Airborne
I had it mostly assembled and then needed a shorter stem. I looked through the stems available on eBay and really didn't see one I liked. Then I realized that what I needed was the same thing that came on my Douglas Ti. An integrated carbon bars. These are made almost entirely in China and American distributors are charging 400+% of what you can get the same thing from the Chinese producers. The only difference is American manufacturers logos.
The GOOD part about integrated stem/bar units is that if you know what size stem length and bar width you need they are lighter than aluminum and most important of all - cannot rotate bar-in-stem. This happened to me once on an aluminum bar-stem setup (which is why we got oversized handlebar stem attachment points) and twice carbon bars in aluminum stems or carbon stems WITH the supposed non-slip carbon paste.
So the Airborne will wait for the integrated bar and I will also decide it I want to put the Centaur levers on it which only downshift one gear at a time of use my Record levers that up shift three or four.
|