TranzX Revives the Suspension Stem with new AntiShock Technology

I rode a bike with a Girvin flex stem once. The handling was so disconcerting that I immediately decided to spend the extra money on a bike with a cheap RockShox fork instead. There is a reason why flexy stems and seatposts fell out of favor. I think full CF or carbon wrapped stems are a better way to deal with road vibration.

I don’t know how much a typical high-end road stem weighs, but I am guessing it’s around 50g lighter than this at least. That said, the concept doesn’t seem as bad as that of the Girvin stem of yester-yester decade. Slow Joe Crow remembers how those things made your bars tilt forward significantly whenever you hit bumps. But this thing only budges and is unlikely to have the same effect. Is it worth 50 or so grams? It depends on who you are.

Bar with enough vertical displacement is going to make handling feel horrible – especially at extremes past your preferred height. Transx likely considered that and spec’d the range accordingly to not make that an issue though. I just don’t think it’s so compelling of a measure past good tires, pressure, gloves, bar tape/grips – hell even the carbon bar some get desperate to buy in hopes of minimizing vibration.

Too heavy. Sorry. Next.

Interesting- I had a conversation about Softride bikes and stems just this morning. We were laughing about how terrifying it was to hit a bump going downhill and have your handlebar dive underneath you. Awesome road bikes, terrifying mountain bikes.

Thankfully, this is absolutely nothing like the Softride stems and looks to have real merit. That said, if you can fit 25 or even 28mm tires on your road bike you’ll have this thing beat by a mile AND get better traction.

this is very interesting and should not be auto-relegated to the back of the line along with an old Girvin.

_if slow joe crow really believes a carbon WRAPPED stem damps vibration better than a non wrapped stem, then the marketing department has done their job well.

@NASH they do not absorb big vibrations

Sevo.
I’ve had a Girvin and a soft ride. I’m of the vintage to have bought them new. I’ve been racing and riding since then and now. I try to have an informed opinion . At the very least the concept helped push sus. Fork development . I’ve also had every type of sus seat post . There’s a reason or two they fell out of favor too.

@Gringo, my views on carbon wrap’s vibration damping effects are based on a Kevin Cameron column about using carbon wrap to dampen resonances on industrial robot arms and MotoGP frames, plus several years of riding an OEM carbon wrapped seatpost. Marketing had nothing to do with it.
I also understand that this is not a Flex Stem or Softride, but any time you add a pivot point and an elastomer there will be some additional movement which will likely get worse as the pivot pin wears. I would also be concerned about the potential for the steerer tube clamp to produce stress risers in carbon fiber steerer tubes.

Just a thought, what happens when this hinge eats it’s way into the carbon fork steerer… Then we will see some Hincapie-eske bike handling….

Your article is about the brand TransX.
On the device pictures I read TranzX.
Isn’t this a bit amateuristic?
OK, dyslectism is allaround but nobody noticed?

Im happy to see this revamping on the suspension stem concept. It may not be for everyone but I had a very bad crash some years back which still plagues me to this day. That being said , with this stem I can ride my Super X and have some relief on the smaller hits. My Carbon frame / fork are just to stiff. This is what ive been waiting for ..peace

Here’s a ditto to Steve for his comments on the Body Float. I own two and can’t overstate what a different it has made on both road and cross bikes, carbon and titanium. I notice that I worry much less about road hazards and focus on a point in the road probably at least twice as far away than before. And if you do get one, they definitely benefit from tuning. Just like the suspension on a race car, spring rate and pre load. Once you get that dialed, it’s a truly remarkable device. Look at the folks that are putting active suspension in the rear ends of their 2016 bikes. Calfee…Moots… Yes it’s been a trend before, but as with any great idea, it’s all about execution. The body float used that tried and true F1 front suspension arrangement- the sloping parallelogram with cross-sprung diagonals and fully adjustable pre-load. It’s just one perfect thing. Miniaturized for a bike.

I stumbled across one at a bicycle festival up here in Snohomish, WA. The design immediately grabbed my attention. No rotation at all (that’s a huge issue). And fully adjustable pre-load. So the 45% of your weight that is supported by your seat is 100% actively suspended from the moment you get on the bike to the moment you get off. It’s smoothing out the road continuously. Forget about wider tires. I put my skinnies back on, bought a carbon fiber seat with no padding whatsoever and started doing criteriums again.

So I’m looking for the front half of the equation, a decent suspended stem. All the units I’ve found are single pivot. Which seems to be poor design, as it shifts the position of the hoods beneath your hands right when you might be trying to modulate your braking or perform some other life preserving maneuver.

If anyone knows of an active suspension stem design using parallelograms or some other non-tilting travel mechanism, I would love to know about it. Even one that just does a minimal amount of damping would be of interest.