Fattening Up

Corpulent Titanium

There were some issues with my set up on the Snow Dog that made me want to do something different. I was thinking about swapping out a few things, but then something else motivated me to go in a totally different direction. I found out that the Blackborow, my planned corpulent answer to Winter, wasn't going to be showing up until December, and well......I know how that can go sometimes.

Now maybe it will show up, but just in case, I had to start coming up with a "Plan B". That was going to take the form of titanium. I have the extendo-Alternators which would boost clearances. I could swap over the carbon Fatty fork to keep the brake standard the hub has. As long as I was at it, I decided to ditch the ridiculous Avid Elixir 9 noise makers masquerading as brakes and put on some real brakes. Namely, the Magura MT-6 stoppers which have traditionally been reliable and more importantly, powerful and quiet. 

So a Saturday spent down in the Lab transformed the MukTruk into By-Tor the Fatty. The transformed titanium beast is super smooth and the fork handles well on this bike as it did on the aluminum Mukluk. There is a bit of a drive train issue in the granny gear. This will be helped a bit if I get a Surly OD crankset. So, I think that's the final piece of the puzzle until the Blackborow comes. Well, I may also be swapping to a wide bar/stubby stem here as well. Anyway, the Winter steed is almost ready.