The handlebar that is. A long time ago I replaced the fork on the Yuba Mundo with one which had tabs for mounting a disc brake. The new fork has a threadless steerer, the whole arrangement is very sturdy and heavy-duty which is what I wanted, but ever since then the handlebar has felt just that bit too low. Unlike with a quill stem, you cannot easily raise the handlebar with the threadless system. My lazy solution to this has been to have the saddle a little bit lower than is ideal to compensate, until now that is. I picked this up from Edinburgh Bicycle Co-Operative on a whim.
Designed to allow that little bit more height adjustment when using a threadless fork. I decided to document the installation for the benefit of others.
I unscrewed the compression bolt from the top cap of the Yuba Mundo headset and removed the bolt and cap.
The star-nut is visible inside the steerer tube. Next I unscrewed the clamping bolts on the stem until they were loose enough to allow me to remove the stem.
Here is the exposed steerer tube after stem removal. I had to replace the headset spacer seen resting on the top bearing race with a slightly thicker one due to the difference in size between the original stem and the stem riser which was to go in its place.
The stem riser was installed in the same (albeit reversed) manner the stem was removed. The stem was then clamped onto the stem riser, around 5 cm higher than it was originally.
The solution isn’t exactly elegant, but it is practical, which is what the Yuba is really all about. I will test ride the bike with the new handlebar position soon and report on how much of a difference it makes.
