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| Moonlander- Seriously fat! |
Obviously, some folks will be stumbling all over themselves to get one of these. I am mildly intrigued. There are some things I can embrace about this bike. Other things are just......well, very Surly-ish.
Surly stuck with 135mmOLD hubs front and rear necessitating a monstrous 28mm offset to the frame and wheels. This so it could clear the 2 X 9 drive train, which itself is customized to fit the frame and purposes of the bike. That is cool. But......I have found that I use a triple quite frequently.
The Moonlander may swing me over yet. I'll wait to see about it after Interbike and hopefully, a test ride.
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| 100mm wide |
Then there are the tires. The "Black Floyd", which is a wide, smoother treaded tire, looks perfect for gravel, pavement, or smoother surfaces where treaded tires make less sense on a fat bike.
The "Nate", a really heavily knobbed 3.8 incher, looks to be the perfect rock crawling tire for El Paso fat biking, or on real off road rides where grip is needed. I can totally see having all these tires in the arsenal for my fat bike. (And future fat bikes. Yes- there will be more!)
So, the tire and rim offerings coming out make more sense to have for my needs in terms of the fat bike stuff.
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| Surly Ogre 29"er |
You see, I've been wondering how long my '03 KM is going to hold out. I would be sorely heartbroken if it broke, or failed in some other way. The BB is stuck in it, and I know it is knocking now, which isn't a good sign.
Now I see the Ogre. This is Surly's take on a 700c/29"er Troll, which is there "utility bike". I basically have put the KM into "utility mode" for the past several years, but it isn't ideally suited to that purpose. For instance, the KM has no rack mounts, no real good fender mounts, and I can't really love that rear drop out/disc brake set up. Never have. The Ogre solves all that and has trailer capabilities as well.
I have all the parts to build one now. I just would be adding a rack, and off I would go doing "lite errands". This would also become my foul weather commuter, and I could totally see an Alfine 11 speed hub on this one. Add the Alfine generator hub up front, and it's all done. A total, go anywhere, anytime rig for my commute/errand needs. My '03 KM would be returned to mtb duty then? Not so fast!
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| 2012 Karate Monkey |
Enter the 2012 Karate Monkey. It has ditched the cantilever posts, (finally!), and Surly lightened up the fork a bit.
The other changes made throughout the years since 2003 have also been retained: Different butted tubing, newer, nicer rear drop outs, "braced" top tube for better stand over, and continuous housing cable runs. Nice things to have, and I would like that.
Now I would transfer over a lot of the stuff from the current KM set up, retain the single speed deal, drop bar, and us it for single track. It wouldn't cost me much extra beyond the frame.
My current KM would be hung from the wall. It has served me well all these years, and this would give me time to carefully remove the bottom bracket at some point, after hours, days, and perhaps months of soaking in some magic elixir!
At any rate, Surly has really brought out some very interesting stuff for 2012. It will take a while to process all of this. And ya know what? They haven't shown us everything up their sleeve yet either......
9 comments:
I'm liking the Ogre....
surly rocks
i love my km
i ride it daily
When you get to that "magic elixer" don't forget the lemon juice. Magic at it's best....
I finally got my own tire for the Pug! I am so claiming this. Why else would they name the tire after me. I can't wait for my Nate 3.8's!
Great stuff from Surly. The new Karate Monkey with the improved fork should be an awesome bike!
Ordered a pair of Black Floyd's this AM. Can't wait to get them in and try them out before the snow flies.
I don't get the Moonlander vs. Pugsley thing. It seems like the Moonlander is basically an improved Pugsley. Why have both? Thanks, Doug
@Doug: When you see how big the Big Fat Larry is,(and I've only seen them mounted to 80mm rims), you can easily see that if you want a frame with beau coup clearances and the BFL/100mm rim combo, you need a Moonlander. While I don't agree with some of the ideas incorporated into the bike, the basic premise is very sound. That being the ultimate floatation bicycle.
First day for riding with BFL up front and Nate on the back. Hill climbing in NE Iowa, where cows call home. You will run out of leg before Nate runs out of 'grab'
MrDaveyGie
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