This is Mike's second WW frame - he lives in VT, and while a standard 29er works great some of the time, he wanted a bike for when it's snowed in. Snowmobile trails, XC ski trails, frozen gravel roads, and the occasional frozen stream descent (yes, that's what he says he's going to do. Sounds nuts to me).
Hence the Fatbike. 110mm of tire clearance in the rear, equally huge fork clearance, rack mounts everywhere, a bazillion housing guides for full-length everything, and a direct mount front derailleur.
I did a new style of direct mount for this bike - used a Paragon unit, slipped/brazed into a piece of 1 1/4 x .058 to get the proper standoff from the seat tube with the 100mm bottom bracket shell. Should be super solid and reliable, and solves the annoying problem of finding a front derailleur that will work with the wide shell/fat tire combo.
Anyway, long story short, the only snow I could find to pose it in was the rapidly decaying pile of slush at the end of the driveway. Mike has selected some horrible orange color, I believe, so he'll be plenty visible out on the trails.
5 comments:
Very clever with the front der. mount stand-off.
Thanks Joel! I thought about facing the paragon mount on the lathe and then using 1 1/8" (or 1") instead, but that was going to be a lot more work (and harder, I think, to keep aligned right when joining to the frame) so I went with this solution.
I sort of wish Paragon sold just a plate version of the direct mount, with no tube/miter portion at all. That could be joined in a variety of ways, IMO most of which would be easier than mitering the blank they supply or using the premitered ones.
Walt, it looks like you cut and weld the seat stays instead of bending them. That's nice.
The frame looks sweet. Makes my Pugsley seem a little cheap. What kind of fork is planned? Pugsley, Salsa Enabler, WW custom???? Snow bikes are where it's at.
My God, we've created a monster - I can't wait to ride it!
Jonathan - WW fork, pic of it on his Jan 7 blog post.
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