 By Matt Hulgan
Better Late Than Never?
Several months ago I got a mysterious package in the mail. It was
from a then unknown company named Enemy Bikes and the package contained
a pretty average looking stem. My job was to test the stem and get
a review up ASAP. I'm afraid that didn't happen according to plan.
Month One:
I took some pictures, weighed the stem and took a few preliminary
notes. I noticed that it was heavier and longer than many of the
flatland stems available. The gyro tabs weren't notched so there
could be complications when dealing with knarped gyro cables. The
machining was good and all the edges were nice and round. Not much
to these first impressions. I should probably test the stem now...
right? Maybe tomorrow.
Month two:
With a groan and a sigh I removed my trusty bizhouse stem and replaced
it with the Enemy stem. One nice thing I noticed was that the stem
had a smaller stack height than my Bizhouse so I could run my bars
slightly higher and this permitted a bit more gyro pull.
Installation was a snap and the stem used US standard bolts that
were kind enough to not strip when I cranked down on them. You may
recall that the camacurra 6 bolt stem had a reputation for stripping
so I wanted to make sure this stem didn't share that flaw. No problems.
It has been installed, uninstalled, and re-installed and there've
been no stripped bolts.
With the stem in place I set about the test. Hitchikers are a good
trick to test the strength of a stem so I tried some fire hydrants
to spinning hitchikers. Believe me when I say that I suck at that
trick and the bars took many a nice dig. After a few weeks of my
sucky hiker skills how much did the stem move? None. Not bad.
Month Three:
After a month with the stem I figured I was ready to write the test
up. Coincidentally a friend of mine needed a new stem. I figured,
"The more, the merrier" and gave the stem to Shayne Khajenoori
to see if he could get the stem to budge. Shayne rides twice as
much as I do so I figured he'd find the stem's braking point. Nope.
I've seen Shayne's bars take plenty of tumbles since he got the
stem and he swears that stem hasn't twisted or slipped EVEN ONCE!
Damn that's good.
The only negative thing Shayne found was that the stem extended
to the back a bit more than some other stems resulting in a few
knocked knees. He assures me that this was pretty rare though.
Summary:
So- this report is late... really late but the upside of this is
that you now know that this stem is DURABLE. It stood up to a month
of my flabby, unskilled abuse. It has endured a few months of Shayne's
tech-mistakes. I't black and proud. What more do you want?
The stem doesn't do anything extra like open bottles or hold your
spare change but it does the chief job of a stem PERFECTLY. It holds
you bars to the fork and keeps your headset from getting loose...
100% of the time as far as we've seen. That's a beautiful thing.
Matt Hulgan
Special thanks to Shayne Khajenoori for the extended test period. |
