Get your mountain bike stem perfectly straight with no special tools required

Turns out your eyeballs are pretty handy, but it helps to have some hard targets, too

Back in October when I first started this Substack thing, I shared a post detailing a quick and easy way to ensure your drop-bar levers are perfectly even with each other (and clearly an awful lot of you found that tip useful). The holy grail of a simple way to guarantee a straight stem on drop-bar bikes unfortunately remains slightly elusive (though I’m working on that), but for now, I do have a pretty foolproof way to get the stem on your mountain bike perfectly aligned – and aside from whatever you need to loosen and tighten your steerer clamp bolts, there are no tools required aside from some keen eyesight.

It drives me nuts if my bars are even slightly off.

One and done

I absolutely can’t stand it when my bar and stem aren’t straight. Does it actually matter all that much in terms of how I ride my bike? Of course not, but that doesn’t change the fact that it bugs me to the point where I just have to pull over to the side of the road or trail to fix it. I’m perhaps more sensitive to this to most, but I suspect I’m not alone here regardless.

Before I detail the process, I first need to give credit where credit is due. This particular idea was first relayed to me many years ago by Jeremiah Boobar. He was then the product manager for RockShox, but he’s since relocated to New Zealand and started a new brand of mountain bike steering dampers called Pademelon. In case you’re reading this, Jeremiah, it’s been a while, but I hope all is well on your end.

Anyway, back to the tutorial.

At the core of this process is a slight shift in your approach: You’re not so much aligning the stem with the front wheel anymore so much as you’re aligning the bars with the fork. You see, mountain bikes already incorporate a handy visual gauge that’s practically universal these days. Suspension fork crowns provide a very reliable secondary reference since the crown should always be perpendicular to the front wheel. As such, if your bars are lined up with the crown, your stem will be lined up, too.