Flex stems, are they dangerous?

[reanimation]

top of my wish list in 1991 or whenever.

On my other thread boy burning said one failed on him (snapped?) i had an old Ammaco BMX cast stem snap on me not fun, thank god i was not jumping steps at the time hop up the kerb was all it took. :shock:

its creaking with weight put on either side of bars but i put that down to the design of it, its designed to move after all?

for the record the bike has not been used much at all till i got it.

 

[scant]

in my experience the parts that broke, the elastomers themselves, either from large impacts or just degrading, or the triangular section on the underside of the stem had a tendency to crack & deform, again under hard loads. back in the day I did see friends flexstems develop massive bearing play, never happened to me tho.
if you havent ridden it in ages & its looking sound I'd probs replace the elastomers anyway, but aside from that it should be fine for lite use.

 

[orange71]

I used to get bearing play all the time - had to carry an allen key around every ride.

 

[reanimation]

Right

might try an allen key, was gonna rebuild but thats on 'my list' :roll:

so long as its not likey to snap right off i'm ok with that!!