What is a Creemee? It’s only the best summer time food product one can enjoy in the state of Vermont. Ideally it’s a vanilla/maple soft serve twist. The best ones are tall and delicious and dipped in rainbow sprinkles. We love creemees, and this stem vaguely looks like one. If you wanna go full bore on it, get it anodized a weird tan vanilla color, because that’s what color a proper creemee is. You can glue anodized cable end crimps to it for sprinkles. Most folks find their handlebars too far away. They try calling to them, come closer! But the bars just stay put, like a deaf holstein when the dinner bell tolls. So you have to up and move them closer yourself. This stem’ll help. Not with the bovine, but with your bars. It gets your bars close as can be without turning a long stem around backward. And the thing is, it doesn’t impact handling like you’d think it would. Who knew? No squirrely handling. More comfort. Super stiff! What else does the Creemee Stem do? It lets folks with short arms or torsos get the bars close even on a bigger frame. So let’s say you are 5’9”, but you have way long legs and a short torso. Lots of gals have that set up, and some fellas too. If you were to go and get a normal bike at a normal bike shop, they’d size you down, way down, to get the reach in check. They would say: the bike will handle funny with anything shorter than a 80mm stem. But that’s not true, it’s just a myth, like the one that Wheaties will make you a good basketball player. When you put a short torso’d, long legged person on a tiny bike they look like a clown and their bars will be way too low. Bad combo. ‘Round here, the only good clown is a rodeo clown. And they don’t ride bikes, just barrels. To size a long leg / short torso person properly, you need a really short stem with a decent amount of rise. This lets you get them on the right size bike, but keep the reach in check. Presto! A bike that actually fits AND rides well. Ian at Swift Designworks engineered this stem. I sent him a few sketches, and we talked about Kooka stems and the Avid Saago (neat stem go check it out!), and what I wanted it to look like. He took my idea and sketch and made it better, in CAD. The end result is lightweight and elegant, but it’s tougher than a boiled owl. Simulated forces well above what a rider could ever produce show the steerer tube failing before the stem. That’s good! Steerer tubes can bend, aluminum stems, not so much. The first few batches of these, Ian made this stem in his garage. Not unlike Paul Price did back in the 1989’s. His garage has a bunch of milling machines with names I can’t remember. They do all sorts of wizardly things with aluminum and steel. He's super overwhelmed these days so we had to find another machine shop to knock these out for us. So now they're machined in Maine by McKenney Machine & Tool Co. which is on a nice country road and has been around since 1980. They use a 5 axis machine, the most efficient machine for the job. Great finishing. They do the anodizing in house then we assemble them here, with clear grease and US made stainless steel bolts. The whole operation is US sourced stuff from start to finish. This is NOT an enduro bike stem. This is not a downhill or free ride stem. It is a normal mountain bike stem, or a road bike stem or a gravel bike stem or a touring bike stem. Not for big rock drops. Not for getting sendy. Gnar is fine but no sendy gnar gnar. 1 ⅛ steerer clamp 80mm Stack Height 31.8 handlebars Torque to 5 Nm for the faceplate bolts 8 Nm for the steerer bolts 52mm steerer tube insertion, leave a 2-5mm gap for bearing preload No carbon steerers! No carbon bars! You can shim it, with a two piece shim to 25.4 or 26mm, but only for drop bars, no albatross style swept back bars. Those styles of bars produce too much leverage, and even though it would probably be fine, I don’t wanna deal with the occasional bar slipping because someone wanted to use this with a Bosco bar. New! How to install a Creemee Stem: Tools needed: 4 and 5mm hex key Clicking torque wrench Grease If using shims: Carbon Paste Calipers or metric measuring tape Make sure you have a star nut already installed. If you don’t, install one using a Park or Unior installer, setting it to the proper depth. Take all the bolts out, put a bit of grease on each one. Measure the steerer. You need 50mm of steerer tube. 49mm is ok. 45mm is not. Use headset spacers to get it really close. Put the creemee without the faceplate on the steerer tube and install the long bolt that goes into the star nut with a 5mm hex key. Snug just until you have no headset bearing play. Turn your fork sideways and hold your front brake to check for play. Holding it straight never works, as the brakes have play and it will feel like bearing play. Center the bars and install the faceplate. Use a criss cross pattern to tighten. You can use a 4mm hex to install the bolts most of the way, but like all stems with 4 bolt faceplates, you need to use a torque wrench once there is tightening resistance. Tighten each bolt to 5nm, making sure the gaps between the faceplate and stem are even on both sides. Then double check them all with your torque wrench. Chances are, they need to be retorqued, as the first 2 bolts will be loose. Retighten the bolts, in the same pattern. Once they are all consistently at 5nm, you are done installing the bars. Straighten the stem with the front wheel. Tighten the steerer clamp bolts on the side of the stem to 7nm ea with your 5mm hex and a Torque wrench. Done!
