One of the most intriguing developments of late has been my love for the fat bike. I've had a Salsa Mukluk for a while now, but aside from some phenomenal riding on snowy singletrack in Colorado's Indian Peaks and some exploration of the many sandy washes central Arizona has to offer, the bike has sat idle in my garage. I've watched as several friends acquired fat bikes and adopted them as their go-to mountain bikes for all kinds of riding.
But my Mukluk kept telling me, "I'm made for the snow. And I'm fun in the sand. But I just don't like much else."
In December, I made a quick trip to Minnesota, visited my parents, did a little skiing, and hung out with some of the guys from Salsa. Over lunch, Tim made a very generous offer that I couldn't pass up, and it's forever changed my outlook on fat bikes.
Two days after returning home, a box arrived. I eagerly tore into it, pulling out an old Lefty fork, a Lefty hub laced to a fat rim, and some custom clamps for making the Lefty work with 4.5" tires. Onto my Mukluk it went, and after a bit of modification inside the fork, I had 70 mm of real squish on the front end of the bike.
All it took was a suspension fork. And amazingly, none of the American suspension manufacturers are making squishy forks for fat bikes.
Come on, guys. How long will you ignore the fastest-growing segment of the bike market?
8 comments:
They are too busy trying to sell us 650b!
The perfect Kokopelli's Trail bike?
I'm sure 650b has its place, but it's just so close to 26 and 29...
Toby, I think this would be a great Koko bike after all that sand dries out. It might be a bit slower, but it would be so much more fun.
I suspect it's because: A) they can sell them as fast as they can build them, so the market isn't pushing to improve on the design (yet), and B) a big part of the marketing behind fat bikes is "Tires so fat you don't need suspension!"
Of course, the history of most mountain bike component design can be described as a progression from "Nobody needs X" to "DH riders need X" to "EVERYONE needs X," (with a small backlash to "Nobody Needs..."), so I would imagine we'll be seeing fat suspension forks & even full fat suspension within three years.
I have been riding with a max 140 limited to about 110mm of travel on a clown shoe with a devistater2 and love it, I am wanting to go to a krampus but not sure I'll like it compared to my fat squishy 4" wide marshmallow.
650B will out sell fatbikes by a huge margin so that's where I would put my R&D dollars, but it seems like one company or the other will develop a fat bike suspension fork sooner or later that's reasonably priced and readily available in Canada/US.
I imagine it's not more than a year away.
A German company currently makes a fatbike suspension fork... either the company or fork is (or both are) called Flame.
And then the Belgian fatbike company Sandman, which has spec'ed Flame forks on many bikes, is currently set to release their own, slightly-lower-priced, fatbike suspension fork.
So they do currently exist. They're just not Fox/RockShox. That said, I would love a 5"-wide version of my Fox...
Huh, I hadn't heard of Flame. The Sandman forks are not going to be imported into the US, and rumor has it that they're disconcertingly flexy. Perhaps that rumor is wrong, though.
Either way, it's frustrating that despite the large volume of fat bike sales in the US and Canada in the past couple years, the only really viable option for a solid suspension fork is a Lefty with custom clamps.
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