Essay: On Cutting the Steerer Tube
None of the many bikes I have ridden ever had the steerer tube docked. Call it a failure to get a bike fit. Maybe it was hesitation at my bike fit numbers in the early years. Perhaps it was the belief that I wasn’t as flexible as I told myself. Whatever the reason, many of my rigs sported a nub above the stem, creating a feeling that things were never really complete.
Several years ago, I was gifted a bike fit at a shop in Philly. It was the final step to dialing in the first road rig to come through the service course. In my early years of riding, I went more for affordability than function. So a sport frame had race parts clamped to it. A couple hours after the fitting the bike finally felt like my own.
Shortly after, I found my way to race geometry and didn’t look back. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to get the measurements from the sport bike replicated on the race bike. Just when it felt close, the frame cracked, a warranty was sent, and the process restarted. Here is where the steerer tube nubs made their appearance. Because those bikes never felt right, it is possible I communicated with my future self by saying this extra steerer tube material was for resale.
Fast forward years later again and a proper race bike rolled into the service course. It was a gift from the Missus and family for a milestone birthday. It was the Giant TCR Pro 0, and it occupied my imagination. The week before it was totaled, I gawked at it extensively. The color. The shapes. The complete package. All were admired before the parting thought, “I’ve got to get that steerer tube cut.” As much as I loved that bike, I never felt like I had committed myself to it on account of an extra ring of carbon periscoping over my stem. To this day I feel like I did a disservice to that bike.
Once again on a warranty frame, and the nub finally pushed me over the edge. After the initial fitting, the conclusion was that the stem had to come down, producing an even more pronounced hump of a steerer. With the request of an artisan cut, the local bike shop chopped the extra carbon off. For the first time in forever I was able to rock a flush top cap to my stem. After all these years, after all those bikes, this feels different. It feels complete.
It may strike readers as silly that a nominal amount of extra material can be lionized into an article, but the focus is on the completion. Bike testers arrange their spacers and look past a pronounced steerer. Bike renters do the same thing when on holiday. My point being that I no longer reside in the hesitant bunch - those who are unsure if this bike is really for them. Cutting a ring of carbon off can be as liberating as it sounds.
It’s likely been twenty years between bike fittings. Tens of thousands of miles have been covered via road bike. All that time, a small percentage of the experience felt borrowed, but starting today, that changes. This is now the bike just for me. The saddle height, the stem length, and now a cut-to-size steerer tube complete the feeling that a rocket ship is being rolled out to the pad for liftoff. Some of future wattage will contain the space once occupied by hesitation. These days every watt is welcome. And who knows just how many watts were saved by slicing off a bit of steerer tube?
