Buy the bike you own: fat bike edition

In the height of the pandemic supply shock, fat bikes and fat bike parts were particularly hard to come by. I originally tried to get my hands on an RSD Mayor, but after waiting a while I pulled out and tried to get my hands on something I could actually ride that upcoming winter.

(as an aside: RSD is still one of the coolest companies in the game. Their prices are extremely competitive and their geometry is thoughtful. In particular the Sargent looks like a ditherers dream— I wouldn’t mind trying one one day…)

I had some fun on my Pugsley, but ended up selling that to my housemate. I replaced it with a size large Beargrease, thinking that I could size up on an older bike to get a more modern fit. While that seems to work on trail bikes, it definitely doesn’t work on a bike where you need to have a ton of weight on both of your tires to not wash out in the snow. So I sold that one to a friend, and to this day he says it’s still his favorite bike.

This single speed Pugs was pretty darned fun, but I don’t believe in toe overlap so it had to go. Morgan Taylor says it’s basically a Crust Evasion but idk. I’m still smitten by the Pugsley platform and wouldn’t be opposed to doing something weird with one again, but I think I’d prefer a Troll or a 1×1.

So I sprang for a REEB Donkadonk. The geometry looked really nice, and I could get it before the snow flew. It was made in the USA and subsequently extremely expensive just for the frame. But I went for it anyway.

The original Donkadonk setup, as shot by Blake Yard.

I ranted and raved about the original Donk build from back in 2022, which you can read on The Radavist here. This part is still true:

“Believe it or not Metro Detroit (where I live and ride) has a surprising amount of really fun singletrack. I’ve had friends visit from Asheville, Santa Cruz, Park City, and beyond, say the same thing. We don’t get any significant climbs or descents, but everything is punchy, the turns are fun, and you get a lot of “bang for your buck” out on your rides. We need more jumps and drops, but we’re working on it. The terrain around here doesn’t provide those spiritual multi-hour riding experiences like out in Pisgah, North Carolina, or the like, but you can just get on your bike and start smashing turns right out of the trailhead.

I think our terrain is more fun when approached with slightly different-from-the-norm bike builds than what you can usually find off the shelf. Everything we ride is XC and XC-adjacent so you want fast-rolling tires. Our elevation comes from glacial kames (i.e. sand deposits) and our trails are twisty-turny, so 2.6″+ tires with some knobs for cornering are welcome when you’re trying to not touch your brakes on the descents. We also have a lot of gravel, greenway, and easier “ATB”-style trails that connect our singletrack, so I didn’t want a pig of a bike on the paved and flat bits. We also get a lot of snow (of various depth and quality), so the bike had to be able to run fat tires. Previously I had a Canfield Nimble 9, which is a brilliant singletrack slayer but felt a little bit big when I wasn’t traveling deeper into the hills or mountains. I also had a Surly Pugsley, which I still love to this day, but it feels a little sketchy on the chunky steeps. I loved how the Nimble 9 carved corners and took on tech with ease, and I loved the stout and upright demeanor of the Pugsley.”

My Nimble 9 was an absolute stunner, and will have a soft spot in my heart forever. But I’m not BMX hesh enough for those ridiculously tukt chainstays and super steep seat tube angle.

But after spending more time on the Donk I began to feel like something was off. For one, I use couldn’t get my stack low enough no matter how hard I tried. Unless I went for a Nino Schurter XC race cockpit, it just wasn’t going to happen. I was beginning to not really dig the Donk, thinking it was maybe just too much of a bruiser or something.

Just look at that silhouette

Then in the winter of 2023-2024 I got very intrigued by the idea of a “low Q” fat bike, a la Otso Voytek, Rocky Mountain Suzi Q, etc. I ended up finding a Suzi-Q in my size just a couple hours away in Ohio for a great price. On the first shakedown ride I was amazed by how normal it felt. I hated the 175mm cranks of course, but I remember being taken aback by how the more twitchy handling actually felt safer than my Donk because I could put the bike where I wanted it immediately, and have more weight over the tires.

So I got home and headed to Bike Insights to compare the Donk and the Suzi-Q, and was confused when I saw how similar their geometries are supposed to be. Then it dawned on me that maybe I flew too close to the sun with my fork choice.

Sometimes you gotta meet a stranger in a grocery store parking lot to get a sick bike.

I went back to my email correspondence with the REEB crew and they told me to “put the longest A2C rigid fork you can find on it” since that generation Donk was designed around a Mastodon suspension fork. So I found a 515mm A2C Kona Wo fork on it. The only issue is I think they didn’t realize that a rigid fork that long actually existed. When I went back to the email they also said to try something like a Surly Ice Cream Truck fork (483mm axle to crown). So, I was running the bike overforked by 32mm. No wonder why I couldn’t get the stack low enough. And no wonder why it felt so fun on weird bumpy skidder fall lines, but felt spooky on flat twisty turns. In addition to the stack being way too high, I slacked out the head tube and seat tube angle tremendously too— to about a 65.5º static head tube angle.

For a sanity check I took the 490mm A2C fork off the Suzi-Q and tried it on my REEB. Oh… so that’s how this bike is supposed to feel. Oops. I ended up grabbing an RSD Mayor fork for the REEB, and it transformed the geometry of the bike.

It still wasn’t perfectly dialed like my Stooge MK4. Having spent a few thousand miles on both my Rambler and MK4 showed me just what a proper rigid bike should ride like. So I continued to buy the bike I owned…

platonic ideal of a trail bike… maybe

The next step was going shorter on the cranks. I originally had it setup with 165mm SRAM GX cranks, which are basically the only reasonably affordable hollowtech cranks you can get for a 100mm bottom bracket shell. So I decided to say screw it and get on the square taper train so that I could run proper short cranks for cheap. For $19 I got my hands on a 155mm spindle BB, which I mated to some 160mm 36/26 Stout cranks from his kid’s bike after he switched him to 1x.. They still weren’t short enough, so I went for some 152mm Alps2Ocean cranks for $33, and a random narrow wide chainring. It completely transformed the feeling of this bike, and I’m back in love with it.

just before I put the 60mm stem on, but it looks so good and rides even better.

There’s a lot to be said about short cranks helping with knee pain, aerodynamic position on drop bar bikes, and spinning up out of corners. But two other enormous benefits of shorter cranks are A) how much better I can corner, which I attribute to the stance that shorter cranks put you in when descending with parallel feet; and B) the way you can make a bike feel smaller and more flickable/nimble. It also kind of helped with the stack situation, since you have to raise your saddle when you go shorter on your cranks.

I’ve tried a grip of handlebars on this thing but I’m settling in with the Crust x Nitto Harvey Mushman bars. I cut them down to 770mm, and the 24º backsweep is right in that comfort-shred zone. I originally had them on a 40mm stem, which seems like it would be very nice for touring, but didn’t have enough weight on the front wheel. I tried a 50mm, which was better, but a 60mm PNW stem in negative orientation has really tied this bike together. I’m back in love again.

All the snow has melted thanks to a couple 55º days and a bunch of rain. But I’ve got a couple winter trips planned in January and February, so say some prayers to the snow gods.