First snow— E’s Rocky Mountain Suzi Q and 83mm bb musings

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Turkey Day is my favorite holiday of the year. Any day dedicated to gratitude, eating, and watching the Lions is a good one by me. And Thanksgiving Eve is usually a huge night for me as a DJ which is always a nice yearly party to look forward to.

Black Friday saw the first 1-2” of snow of the season. We had originally planned to do a 40ish mile ATB ramble scramble bonanza with a big crew Saturday, but given the ice reports we decided to call the audible and go for a ramble close to home.

1-2” of snow doesn’t warrant a fat bike by any means, but if you got it you may as well use it. Plus, the only studded tires we have are fat. So after hanging up parts-less for the last half a year I finally put E’s Rocky Mountain Suzi Q back together.

The Suzi Q is one of the few fat bikes on the market that takes an 83mm downhill bottom bracket standard (most fat bikes are 100mm or even 120mm years back), alongside the Otso Voytek (or Paul Price’s incredible custom Meriwether, or the folks that remove BB spacers on their Pugsleys and run downhill cranks). After learning about this geometry choice I was quite taken by the idea of riding fat tires on a bike with a more reasonable Q-factor. It’s not that I need roadie level low Q, but cornering on 220ish mm Q-factor does feel less good. And as fate would have it I found the base level aluminum model in my size just a couple hours away in Ohio for an amazing price, practically new. So I jumped in the truck to grab it, thinking it would replace my REEB Donkadonk (more on this later, and in a future post).

When I brought it home E was very taken by its looks. I took it for a few rides and I was taken by how normal it rode, thanks to that 83mm BB shell. It was setup a bit more traditional XC style (70 or 80mm stem, 175mm cranks). To make a long story short I realized that I could make my REEB feel more like this bike, and give E the Suzi Q with a couple component changes to make the fit better.

First up, we put on the shortest 31.8mm stem we could find. E dug the blue ano on this Spank Spoon 33mm stem (which is basically the shortest we could go without going to a 0mm stem). Then, the 175mm cranks had to go. Given the 83mm press fit bottom bracket I was more or less locked into the Race Face Aeffect cranks it came with. Fortunately my internet buddy Dr. Welby has been short crank pilled by yours truly, and he has experimented with drilling Aeffect cranks thanks to the design of the back side of the cranks. He was able to get them to about 152mm, which is the longest possible for 175mm cranks. They’re even chopped nice and clean. 155mm are the shortest cranks I’ve run, and for the quick spin around the neighborhood on E’s bike these feel quite normal, though I suspect 150mm is probably my floor for crank length (for the record I’m 5’9”).

Then it was just a matter of getting it together Saturday morning so that we could go bimble. I decided to give her the baller polished silver Surly My Other Brother Darryl wheels (custom built with Bitex hubs), ensconced in a studded Terrene Wazia 4.5” front tire and 45NRTH Dillinger 4” rear tire instead of the stock 27.5 Mulefut wheels. I set her up with the killer min-max wide range 10 speed drivetrain (Shimano Saint shifter, Shimano 11 speed or 12 speed derailer, Microshift Advent X alloy spider cassette). I am planning to put a 90mm OneUp dropper on it once my 120mm dropper shows up for my Stooge Rambler, but she seems to be fine on a fat bike with the rigid post.

I decided to take out my Stooge MK4 since my REEB was still taken apart. Also I’m pretty convinced that a 29×3.25” tire has the same size (if not bigger) contact patch than a 26×3.8” tire, but I’m not sure how to measure this yet.

The bike obviously looks amazing, but it rides really well too. Fat bikes can have a particular feeling to them, and this just feels like a pretty normal trail bike that happens to have huge tires. It’s been so inspiring to me that I’ve decided to look into a custom 83mm BB shell fat bike, but that’s another discussion for a future day.

Here’s to La Niña providing a proper snow base this winter.