Recently one such event happened in the Surly Camp. We woke up one morning after a night of beer, brown liquor, fancy shirts and alleyway dancing dressed as giant stuffed bears, and this is what we found.

We screwed up the Karate Monkey.  The new version, which we love, has a flaw in a couple of versions. If you bought or want to buy a 20” Karate Monkey and want to run rotors larger than 160mm, you can’t. If you bought or want to buy a 18” and you want to run a 185mm rotor, you most likely can’t. 22” can’t do 203mm.

Well, you can, but only with some modification of the adapter for the brake caliper or the rear rack braze-on. 

We never think it’s a good idea to go cutting things off your Surly, though that’s never stopped anybody in the past (I do it all the time). However we often think it’s a great idea to take a Dremel tool to other people’s stuff, so shaving bit of the corner of the brake adapter could work it for you.

That all being said, if you want more stopping power, and you ride a Karate Monkey, we suggest 185mm rotors on the front and the 160’s on the rear.   Most of your braking power comes from the front, so we find that this provides sufficient stopping power. At least for us (the real advantage of bigger rotors comes from better modulation and heat distribution. This becomes prevalent when you’re going downhill fast and braking a lot. Otherwise it’s less of an issue, or so say the nerds who design our bikes.).

However, if you want them big brakes for even more stopping power, or other reasons we may not have thought of or don’t want to think of cuz we’ll think they’re gross or just plain unnatural then you’ll have to take extreme measures, and take them into your own hands to boot. Consider yourself warned.

All in all, what I’m really trying to say is, “Sorry we screwed up.” We’re not just sorry, by the way, we want to fix it. We’re working on just that for future production lines.

That’s pretty much it, and thanks to Guy.Ford on mtbr.com for pointing this out to us. 

Back to drinking now.

Go ride your bike asshole!

Surly was well represented and, though many racers brought their tricked out Gucci fatbike wall-art steeds to race upon, the two fastest hammers in the woods that day were running the bike that started it all, the tried and true Surly Pugsley. 1st place was Larry “Sarge” Sauber, and 2nd was Heath “Red Squirrel” Weisbrod (who incidentally was riding a single speed Pug).

Larry told one of our engineers, Thor, that he wasn’t really tempted much by the lighter weight “Gucci” stuff out there because he wanted to be able to abuses his fatty without worrying about braking shit. Or it was something like that, who can remember the exact wording between all the snow, the bicycle pedaling and the gentle sipping of sweet, sweet beer.

A shout-out is in order to the folks at Ramsey Bicycles who donated 1600 bucks worth of swag for the race, including a Pugsley frame. You can find them at www.ramseybicycles.com.
Thor was there with some demo bikes (the Surly engineer, not the God of Thunder) enjoying the race the weather and the massive fire stoked with a leaf blower.
I should also mention that there were five unicyclers in the race, the radest of whom was riding a Surly Conundrum!

Check out that fire!

Shine on.

 

White Brothers makes a fork called the Snowpack and it’s available in two different lengths, 450mm and 468mm (we would recommend 450mm for our bikes). It has carbon fiber legs (if you’re into that sort of thing though we say a Surly rejects carbon fiber like a cat rejects hairballs) and is designed around a 135mm front disc spaced hub. White Brothers has the tire clearance listed at 4.96”.  Here is where you want to pay close attention. Our forks and front 135mm hub use rear disc spacing. The Snowpack will not work as an out of the box replacement unless you are using a Phil Wood or Paul Components hub.

Salsa also makes a fat tire adventure fork called the Enabler. The Enabler is designed to work with the 135mm rear disc spacing hubs (like Surly) and Salsa lists the tire clearance at 4” of adventure on an 82mm wide rim. The length of the Enabler is 468mm axle to crown. Our fat forks have a listed length of 447mm axle to crown; that’s what the frame was designed for. Got it? So if you are adventurous and you are thinking about putting this on a Pugsley be prepared for the front end to adventure up significantly-which technically voids your Surly frame warranty, be warned you adventurers’.

9:ZERO:7 manufacturers an Aluminum fat tire fork that is available in two different lengths, 450mm and 468mm (once again, we recommend the 450mm). 9:ZERO:7 has a tire clearance listed at 4” with their 100mm rim (called the FlatTop). This fork is designed to work with 135mm rear disc spaced hubs (like Surly) so this fork should work fine on our Pugsley. I say should because I have no idea of what type of tire, rim, fender, rack, light-system, gun mount, or other random ass shit you have on your bike. Make sense?

I’m not even going to bother getting into fat front suspension forks. In my humble opinion there is just not enough information available yet. Do you need a fork with travel on a fat tire rig? Maybe you think you do. Who knows, I’m just not that adventurous.

Update:

Adam was kind enough to supply me with some more information.

I mentioned the difference between our front 135 hubs [with rear rotor spacing] and the Paul/Phil front 135 hubs [with front rotor spacing], but it is also worth mentioning the offset wheel builds. For example, the 450mm 9:ZERO:7 fork would fit fine on the Pugsley, as the ATC and rotor spacing match, but the fork is designed for a symmetric wheel build, where as the Pugsley has an offset wheel/fork. If a customer has a stock Pug complete, they would need their wheel rebuilt. 

The other consideration is the disc caliper adaptor. The Pugsley uses a rear disc adaptor, where as the Moonlander and the Enabler forks use front rotor adaptors. This is a bit confusing, so one more time for clarity. Pugsley, Moonlander, and Enabler forks all use the rear 135mm rotor offset, but the Pugsley uses rear caliper adaptors, Moonlander and Enabler use front caliper adaptors. The Snowpack fork uses the front caliper adaptor standard, and I could not find the specs on the 9:ZERO:7 fork. 

As always please, feel free to call us or send us an email and we’d be more than happy to answer your questions.

Random creepy bastard

Stay Surly.

BoB

Oh... heading to TGI Fridays for some fajita poppers and then out to the flea market?

YOU ARE GOING TO LAKE GENEVA WISCONSIN FOR THE TEAM SNOW BIKE ENDURO.

I'm going to Lake Geneva for the Team Snow Bike Enduro.

THESE ARE THE MOONLANDERS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR.

These are the Moonlanders we're looking for.

MOVE ALONG.

Move along.

Adams Desk

That's NOT a drawing of a full suspension fat tire bike on his monitor by the way.

Here's a picture of Adam getting rad.

And here's a picture of Adam feeling not-so-rad.

Hugs all the way around.

BoB

We have some more Moonlander complete rigs ready to go as of late last week. There are still a few left as I type this. Thanks for your patience if you've been waiting for one.

We also received some Clownshoe 100mm rims to compliment the Moonlander framesets that are available. So, if you've been staring at the glittery blackness of a Moonlander frame, but don't have the hoops to build it, now's your time to act.

Along this same vein, the Marge Lite rims came in too. There are just a few left. 65mm of drilled out, single wall, lightweight roundness for your Pugsley or similar fat-type bicycle.

In other news, I just received a notice from my state gubmint that I owe sales tax on a bathtub, sink, terlet, and fixtures that I ordered from an out-of-state establishment... three years ago. Big Brother is all up in my porcelain. Creepy.

Turning back to bicycles, as many of you in the Midwest have noticed, there is no snow. In fact, it's been 45 degrees around these parts lately and it's starting to freak some of us out. I've narrowed the causes down to a couple of possibilities for you to discuss around the water cooler or beer fridge or S&M dungeon - whichever you have at work. My theories are as follows:

1. Snow is refusing to fall until the elections are over.

2. Johnny took the Cold Miser out for "a few" over the holidays and now he's lost most frontal lobe function. 

3. God hates sleds.

4. The Mayan calendar is so tired of people treating it like the Farmer's Almanac that it's actually decided to end the world.

5. Merlin's Order of Meteorologists has decreed that it should be so.

The sheer lack of snow may also impact the very busy Fat-style Bicycle event calendar which can be found on the internet web-shack run by our man Gomez. You should make it a point to get to one or all of these. Even if they are cancelled due to the lack of snow, you should still show up and demand hot chocolate... or a Mai Tai.

Thanks for reading - and on a MONDAY even. You're doing great.

Skip

People have been beaten, nerds were enslaved, new punishments were invented, whips were cracked.

Now everything is better.

Call us. We'll chat.

-Skip

“Derby,

I love your bikes! I own 35 of them right now. I would like to buy one of your new Excavators but I can’t figure out what size to get. I have a 34” inseam, I like to ride one handed, naked from the waist down. Please let me know what size I should order!

Sincerely,

Tom Cruise

PS. could you send me some stickers?”

We understand that it is sometimes difficult to figure out what size bike you should be riding so we wrote up this little Spew (you should click Spew now) to help alleviate some of your stress. The bottom line is that we would really like you to go into your local shop and talk to those wonderful people. They can see things that we can’t through an email or phone call and they will do everything they can to make sure you’re on the right size bike. They like you just as much as we do and they would love to have your business.

Sometimes people will send us their ideas as well. I wish I could share some of those with you but our attorney has advised me against it. I listen to him because his beard is longer than mine. But I am going to share something with you that I got from Craig over at MENDON CYCLESMITH. It's okay, I asked him if I could.

Craig likes bikes with fat tires and we make some bikes that use fat tires. Craig does not like to be sprayed with water/slush/snow when he’s riding, I can’t imagine why. So Craig came up with this:

It’s pretty simple but you’ll need an old Endomorph, or similarly fat tire, some zip ties and a big ‘ole huntin knife. Cut the tire to the desired length, punch some holes in it and zip tie it to your down tube. You could do something like that for the rear tire as well by taking another piece of the now cut tire and zip tie it to a seatpost fender, like an SKS X-Blade or a CRUD Raceguard. It may not be pretty but it’ll help to keep you dry. Right now no one makes anything that will work off the shelf so something like this will have to do. I expect you'll see more about fenders soon, but don't quote me on that.

Now enjoy some Metal.

BoB

Moonlander framesets are in stock now.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that there are very few Clownshoe rims. Most of the rims that have been produced were routed to complete bike production, so you tinkering, frame-up sorts (exept for a few of you) are going to be left wanting for a bit. We'll have a few more Clownshoes in early January. We wish we had enough, but we don't.

Here's the important part: if you have your bike shop order a frameset, THEY MUST CALL US TO GET THE RIMS ON THE ORDER. They will not be able to put rims on a regular website order that they may be used to using.

Moonlander Mr. Whirly spindles are in stock and can be ordered. MWOD chainrings are in stock and can be ordered.

If you don't know what these things are, then it's probably not important to you. That's ok, you're still a good person who is valued and important.

In other news: Necromancer Pugsley frames are going into stock. Remember that the name is just the name of the color scheme and should not be a big deal in your life. In fact, it does not say Necromancer, Black Ops, Dingle Hole, or Dave's Closet on any of the frames or parts anywhere.

Also, please note that the Necromancer comes as a FRAME ONLY. They do not come with forks. What you do is this - you buy the frame and then choose whichever of the four forks we produce: 135mm offset (the one that comes stock on the Pugsley), 100mm non-offset, 135mm non-offset, or the Moonlander 135mm non-offset - which is now available. You will not get a fork if you do not order one with your frame.

Also, Ogre compete bikes are in stock now. This is exciting for me. I can tell because parts of me are sweaty and it's cold outside. Order these and have fun.

In other cool news, we also now have framebags produced by our good friends at Revelate Designs. They are specifically made for the Pugsley and the Moonlander (and have specific part numbers for the various frame sizes) and they look like this:

We will also have some soon for the Karate Monkey/Ogre frames.

Thanks. You're our only hope.