I certainly can't speak from an engineering perspective but I think I'd personally want that 3cm gap to be filled. Although I'd feel ok in the short term with the stem and steerer both being steel if just testing fit with a few short rides and I'd likely go ahead and ride it as-is before going to the trouble of finding or making my own full sized shim. But if deciding to keep that setup longer term I try to get a properly sized shim to fill all the space.
I have a trashed steel frame from which I already cut and filed some small shims from the middle of the downtube for a threaded 1" headset that needed some space taken up. It's seamed tubing and I'd probably just try cutting a single full length 7cm shim from that same downtube and cut the split at the seam to help eliminate some filing and sanding. If I didn't have this trashed frame I guess cutting down another 4cm alloy shim to the required length is the other logical alternative. I'm not necessarily opposed to such hacks but I'd have some reservations with that excess air space between stem and steerer. For some reason I feel like I'd be a little more confident even if the steerer itself was a bit shorter if both steerer and stem were a matching 1" spec. I have no educated basis for this and ymmv, of course. Brian Cole Lawrenceville, NJ On Friday, October 26, 2018 at 1:47:15 PM UTC-4, Benz, Sunnyvale, CA wrote: > With the shortish shim, the effective steerer tube length ends where the > shim ends, and the part of the steerer that protrudes until 1cm from the > top of the stem doesn't count. From looking at the picture you've provided, > we know that the shim is tall enough to ensure the stem is clamped at least > adequately to the steerer (and won't pinch, which is unlikely for a steel > steerer anyways). Thus, the same question applies: does the stem require > the steerer to be part of the structure, or is 3cm of unsupported and > cantilevered stem OK? > > > On Friday, October 26, 2018 at 9:11:40 AM UTC-7, Drw wrote: >> >> So i did get that nitto stem and put it on last night. The part i forgot >> to mention is that im using a shim to go from 1-1 1/8. So the steerer tube >> ended up being about 1cm below the top of the stem (which seems plenty >> close) but the shim is only 4cm tall, so it sits considerably lower than >> the top of the stem (which is about 7cm tall). a taller shim would fill the >> gap, but i dont see any online that are very tall. Is this even a problem? >> thoughts? >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.