Last night (or was it almost 3am this morning?) as I built up a KOF Schwinn Paramount I bought from Robbie Fellows, I was trying to decide which quill stem I was going to use.
I had several to choose from, but as I started looking closer at them I noticed a few of them had some scratches on them. These were stems I had probably bought over the years as lightly used or near new, and other than these scratches they looked like new. These were nice quality stems like 3T, Nitto, etc.
The scratches mainly looked like they might have been caused while in a headtube, because they were going sideways on the stem. None of them looked to be very deep or long, but it got me wondering how much of a scratch is too much.
I know most of the stems have a scored minimum insertion mark, so it must be okay to have some marking in the stem.
Any suggestions on how to know when a scratch on a stem will compromise its integrity...before it snaps while riding? ;-)
Thanks,
Frank Phillips
McAlester, OK