3T

ARX LTD Stealth Stem

Satin black is cool. Many of today’s top-shelf bikes are designed with a menacing mix of gloss and satin black. To upgrade one of these race-bred rigs with bright, shouty components would defeat the purpose. To hang your handlebar on anything less than the 3T ARX LTD Stealth Stem would be nothing short of sacrilege.

The 3T ARX LTD Stealth stem is a perfect match for any 3T handlebars, but they've also made a nod to the practical by making it perfectly compatible with other manufacturers' bars. This is possible because particular attention has been paid to the design of the clamp. Recognizing that modern steerer tubes and handlebars are often made from delicate composite materials, the ARX clamp interface is specifically intended to clamp the handlebar and steerer securely for even the most rugged, Roubaix-like conditions, but gently enough so to ensure that none of the clamped material is compromised. How secure-but-gentle is it? So much so that it's passed the rigorous CEN certification standards test.

3T designs their products from the inside out rather than the outside in. That means that they make use of the natural characteristics of the material in their designs. Composite materials have a grain, like wood, so they're stronger in one plane than another. The key to building strong, light structures using composite material is to tailor the grain of the fibers to line up along the load path. That's why the ARX LTD Stealth stem sports that impossibly sexy unidirectional carbon look rather than a more typical woven appearance.