>>> The best mountain bike stems

As stems designed to withstand burly abuse go, the Crossfire could almost be described as elegant in its design and execution. Funn has sculpted the Crossfire from standard issue 6061 aluminium. But where as previous stems have all been angular CNC machining, the Crossfire has been created mainly through the forging process, leaving it all soft-edged and flowing lines. There still is a bit of CNC work such as the logo on the faceplate but it has been used mainly to provide better clamping surfaces rather than for looks. Despite forging leaving behind more material with these softer edges, the Crossfire is still really competitive on in terms of weight. Our 35mm length/31.8mm diameter test sample weighed in at just 129 grams, just shy of the weight Funn list it as.

The Crossfire is a zero-rise stem in both lengths offered, even though the shaping plays tricks with your eyes and makes it look like a negative rise stem. One neat feature of this design is it places more body material under the handlebar so puts less force on the faceplate to hold everything together. The faceplate has also been designed to offer a wider clamping surface than other stems and also benefits from a zero gap clamping technique to ensure adequate and balanced tightening.