Fat Dreams Have Been Stoked: Part II

So what do you do with friends that feed the addiction? Meh......I don't know, but the following items that arrived via the U.S. Postal service yesterday from a "so called friend", (actually, I kid- he is a good friend), sure don't help matters any. Without further adieu....

Twang..kerrrang!

Pedals in the shape of guitars. Who knew? I figure it may be the start of something sorta fat, (Mentioned back here), and well....yes- Pedals can be the cause of a whole new bike build.

Why not?

(Big thanks to "JG" for the sweet peds!)

Okay....now on to some hardcore rumor mongering.... Seems that Surly Bikes is teasing some monsterous, fat tired contraption. They stoked fat dreams recently by putting out some "Bigfoot-esque" grainy, far away shot of a guy wheelieing what looks to be a wider-than-thou 29"er type ma-sheen.

Commentary has been running amok with all sorts of guesses, people saying they've ridden it, think they know what it is, and such other nonsense. Bike-geeks are the worst for stuff they can't quite figure out, buy now, have ever, or think they should be able to get. Give them a crack in the door, a slight chink in the corporate armor, and the rumors come rushing in like a dam bursting.

As wide as that'll ever get right there....

So what is it? Well, the scuttlebutt is that this is a 700c based wide rim, (some are saying 65mm Marge Lite type of deal), and that there is possibly some 3 inch wide tire to go on it.

I get the wide 29"er rim thing. That's easy for Surly to get made. However; I don't quite buy into the wide tire bit. Here's why.....

I have it on good authority that the 2.4 inch wide tires we have for 29"ers now have maxed out the current tire molding capabilities of Asian tire makers. The machines simply cannot make anything bigger. A new tire machine to make a bigger tire would cost what? Well, you can imagine one machine to do that would cost a whole bunch of money that would need to be made up for in lots of tire sales. And how many tires would be sold?

Good question- How many folks would be willing to buy a 3" wide tire that surely would weigh as much as most nice 3.8" wide fat bike tires? I bet not very many. So the likelihood of this mythical tire machine, and therefore 3" wide 29"er tire, is dim at best.

So, a wide 700c rim- Yes. The 3" wide 700c based tire- Not likely, but there is always that possibility, I suppose....

Then you have the frame needed to fit a tire at 2.4", (the widest available for 700c now), on a 65mm wide rim. That width might be about 70mm at the casing, but my guess is that the tire print I have pictured above, (a 2.4" Ardent tubeless on a P-35 at sub 20psi), is all you are gonna get for float, even with the wide rim. (I measured that combo at about 62+ mm, if I recall correctly)

So, Surly needs to have a frame/fork combo for this, the wider rim, and it really needs a 3" tire, however unlikely that may seem now, or I don't really see a point here. My opinion.

And who knows- it might be something completely different. Time will tell if we are dreaming, or seeing the future.....

UPDATE: Be careful what you post to the innerweb-o-sphere folks.  Someone at mtbr.com found the following....

Fuel for the fire....