So you want to rock a flat bar on road stem. Or some old-school track bars in that beautiful quill stem you’ve had sitting around. Perhaps you need to shim out a 25.4 handlebar to make it work in your 26.0 stem clamp diameter. Or maybe you want to go all the way to 26.2. You could buy some handsome stainless steel well made Nitto shims at your LBS for about $16 if that will help you feel more confident riding your 25.4 moustache bars in your 26.0 Nitto stem.
Or…
…you could just shim it out with a beer can. It’s so
zen It’s so environmentally friendly. It’s so cheap. It’s so readily available. You can even find quality shim stock sitting around at 1001 4th Avenue. About one and a half wraps with a well cut piece of aluminum will work just fine and a little beer residue will help things along. I don’t recommend attempting to shim a normal handlebar up to the 31.8 clamp size that has become so popular these days, but I live in a square taper world of one-inch threaded quill stems, headsets and steer tubes and I don’t expect to touch anything 31.8 for quite some time.
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