When it comes to a stem on a gravel bike there isn’t much of a job that this component has to do, granted they need to clamp to the fork steerer tube to hold the forks on and they also have to hold a handlebar securely at the right angle. Simple eh? Well not really because you are quite literally trusting your life to this piece of metal (or carbon fibre) So all in all it’s one of the most important parts of the bike. Afterall you can only steer so far by leaning the bike over, to turn the wheel you need to be connected to it!
However, lets face it all that safety and steering stuff is secondary to how good a stem looks! you’ll be staring at it for hours anyway so might as well get one that looks great from above and from other riders perspective. If the bike looks and feels good you’ll want to ride it more.
The recently rebranded hope RX stem, it used to be Hope’s XC stem, achieves all the above with ease. It is designed and built in the UK at Hope’s factory at Barnoldswick in Lancashire. Hope are not new to the bicycle industry, they made some of the first disc brakes for those new fangled mountain bikes way back in 1989! I had a pair of their C2 hydraulic brakes and have had lots of their excellent hubs and wheels ever since. Their reputation for CNC machining is exemplory and their customer back up and service legendary. Since 2000 the company has concentrated fully on bicycle components.
The RX stems are all CNC machined from a solid piece of aluminium with a separate face plate to hold the bars. They come in 80mm length with an agressive -15 degree rise/drop or the version I opted for, a 70mm 0 degree rise (90mm also avaliable). I chose the black version as it goes with anything but you can choose from orange, purple, red, blue, smoke, or silver. my 70mm length stem weighs in at 137g on my unvarified kitchen scale. the anodising is perfect and a much better way to colour the stem than painting as you can see where all the machining has taken place. The finishing is spot on too, all surfaces are smooth with no burrs or imperfections, the stem just looks and feels like a quality product. A few grams can be saved by opting for the titanium hardware version, I went for standard bolts.
It’s not a superlight carbon stem but then i really really don’t want to trust a featherlight piece of plastic with my questionable riding style rolling down some of the stupid things I find myself riding down. it does everything a stem needs to do but does it with style and you also get that proud feeling that you’re using something designed and actually made right here in the UK which is priceless in my book.
At the end of a test period I always like to balance what’s good and what i think could improve a product, This is impossible with the Hope RX stem, quite simply for everyday gravel riding, bike packing and exporing it is faultless.
you can find out more about the RX stem and all he other UK made products from the Hopetech website here Hopetech.com
UK GRAVEL COLLECTIVE 