Yes, that is totally clickbait - my apologies.
Except their stems kinda do suck.
Except their stems kinda do suck.
Cool? Absolutely. Very few stems are cooler than a Syncros. Their original quill stems with the ovalized extension - vertically stretched at the quill and horizontally stretched at the bar - were like nothing else. And they carried that design along even with the changes to industry standards, because it had become their brand - but that's where it went wrong.
Look at how tall the Syncros stem is there compared to a RaceFace stem. 40mm on the RF vs. 60mm on the Synrcos. Meaning that any bike running the Syncros will have to have a 20mm longer steerer tube. This is annoying!
There's been a couple times I couldn't use this stem on a bike because of this.
Look at how tall the Syncros stem is there compared to a RaceFace stem. 40mm on the RF vs. 60mm on the Synrcos. Meaning that any bike running the Syncros will have to have a 20mm longer steerer tube. This is annoying!
There's been a couple times I couldn't use this stem on a bike because of this.
Second problem is maybe more specific to this bar, but it's still kinda dumb. Notice how wide the clamp is on the Syncros stem vs. the RaceFace? For me it means that I can't use the Syncros with my Origin8 SpaceBar. The bar doesn't have a flat bit wide enough to go in the Syncros stem. Not sure if this is an issue with any riser bars out there, but it's still pretty annoying.
Third problem is my favourite bike accessory, the Niner Bikes You are What You Drink topcap. This top cap allows you to attach a bottle cap on it after you've properly pre-loaded your headset. But you can't use it on a Syncros stem because of the stupid angle cut on the top of the stem.
Annoying!
And a quick side note on that angle cut; Rocky Mountain angle cut their seat tubes for a couple years, which looked super cool, but what a pain in the ass those were. Lose yours, and then what? Did Rocky make a whole bunch of extras - sure doesn't seem like it. I don't mind admitting that I've cut the seat tube square on a Rocky Thin Air so a regular clamp could be used because the one on the bike got warped and didn't grab the seat tube properly.
The price of being cool...
Third problem is my favourite bike accessory, the Niner Bikes You are What You Drink topcap. This top cap allows you to attach a bottle cap on it after you've properly pre-loaded your headset. But you can't use it on a Syncros stem because of the stupid angle cut on the top of the stem.
Annoying!
And a quick side note on that angle cut; Rocky Mountain angle cut their seat tubes for a couple years, which looked super cool, but what a pain in the ass those were. Lose yours, and then what? Did Rocky make a whole bunch of extras - sure doesn't seem like it. I don't mind admitting that I've cut the seat tube square on a Rocky Thin Air so a regular clamp could be used because the one on the bike got warped and didn't grab the seat tube properly.
The price of being cool...
Oh and we're not done with the angle cut!
For the first year Syncros made their custom topcap out of aluminium, then then went to plasriv after that. And like the angled seat clamps Rocky used, if you lost your Syncros topcap, you're out of luck - you couldn't use the regular topcap that every other stem in the world uses. You know, the kind like you probably had a dozen of lying around?
Not to mention that the plastic one was easily torched by amateur mechanics, rendering it useless. I put a bunch of Gorilla glue on the one above, and it kinda works. Not sure why I have two of these actually. I don't think I have two extra Syncros stems.
So yeah, that original Syncros quill stem was bad-ass. The later ones, still bad-ass - they don't suck - but they're really limited in where you can use them, which sucks.
For the first year Syncros made their custom topcap out of aluminium, then then went to plasriv after that. And like the angled seat clamps Rocky used, if you lost your Syncros topcap, you're out of luck - you couldn't use the regular topcap that every other stem in the world uses. You know, the kind like you probably had a dozen of lying around?
Not to mention that the plastic one was easily torched by amateur mechanics, rendering it useless. I put a bunch of Gorilla glue on the one above, and it kinda works. Not sure why I have two of these actually. I don't think I have two extra Syncros stems.
So yeah, that original Syncros quill stem was bad-ass. The later ones, still bad-ass - they don't suck - but they're really limited in where you can use them, which sucks.
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