Tuesday, December 20, 2011

A Fat, Magic Carpet Ride

No decals!
Well........I bet it won't take you long to figure out what this is!

I decided to take the plunge and I ordered a new Salsa Cycles Mukluk Ti, or in other words, a titanium Mukluk frame and steel Enabler fork.

Having seen other titanium Salsa Cycles products, I was quite aware of the quality of workmanship that a titanium fat-bike from them would bring to the table. When I saw that Salsa was going to do a flotation bike last year, I knew a titanium one would follow shortly. It just made too much sense. Then when the call went out for pre-orders to Salsa Cycles dealers, like the shop where I work, I jumped on the bandwagon. I didn't know exactly when it would come in, but it has now, and I will begin getting parts for this rounded up.

The Muk 1 comes with a SS dropout and a geared one.
The plan for this frame and fork will be to build up a "summer" fat bike. In essence, I will using this most of the year, and the Snow Dog will be limited to actual winter snow bike duties and outfitted accordingly.

Since most of the year is snow-free here, the titanium bike will be the non-snow rig. (But that doesn't mean I would not ever use it in snow!)

The tentative plan now is to go 1X9 or 10 with a SRAM TT shifter on a Paul's mount thumbie style. If I gear correctly, it should be just peachy for almost anywhere I go with this bike. I will be using an ISIS crank, but I have not determined what it will be just yet. For times I go to the mountains, I may swap over to a Origin 8 Sub Compact crank for even lower gear choices and then I'll use an XT direct mount 2X derailleur. But for now, it's 1X. I may even do a single speed set up at some point.

The wheels will be a bit different. I am going to use a Surly rear single speed hub as a front hub and a Salsa Cycles rear 170OLD hub. These will be laced to Fatback UMA II 70mm rims that are drilled out. No need to have the widest rims on a summer fat bike build, and the Fatback rims will be lighter than Rolling Darryls too. Tires will eventually be Husker Du's. (They are not quite available yet.) I also have spare 3.8 Larry tires to swap over to if I desire.

The rest of the build will be pretty swanky stuff, most of which I already have. Chris King head set, FSA stem, carbon bars, and carbon seat post. I'll probably get a WTB SST saddle on there, and Ergon Bio-cork grips. Brakes will be the new Elixir 9's from Avid in a pewter hue, which should go well with titanium. The blades will be carbon fiber on those as well.

It will be awhile before this one is ready to roll, but I will put up some progress reports on the build as I go. Stay tuned for the "as yet to be named" titanium Mukluk!

6 comments:

Doug M. said...

oh man, that is gonna be one sweet ride (to add to all your other sweet rides!).

+1 for By-Tor

Ari said...

Congrats on the Ti Muk. I have been riding a ti selma and a ti mariachi and they are wonderful bikes. I would really like to see a full coverage fender for my pugsley. I friend took a cascadia 29er fender, cut it lengthwise with a band saw and expanded it. Lots of work was put into it but it is perfect.
Ari

Efrain Aguiluz said...

what about a white brothers carbon fork?

Guitar Ted said...

@Efrain Aguiluz: The White Brothers Snow Pack is a fine fork. However; it is very expensive and only saves a minimal amount of weight over the stock Enabler fork. Added to this is the lack of versatility of the White Brothers fork, which has no braze ons, and also requires a specific hub, thus eliminating the possibility of swapping it over to my other Mukluk if that became necessary.

Elvis said...

Hey GT, long time reader etc etc...

I'm seriously thinking of a Muk' Ti myself. Currently the only thing stopping me the rear hub spacing. See... I'm an IGH kinda' guy.

I was thinking of getting a custom LH Alternator dropout machined by my local framebuilder to allow for the "extra" 35mm. What do you think?

Also regarding forks... what about http://www.german-a.de/en/flame.html

Guitar Ted said...

@Elvis: Thanks for your comment and for reading!

I think it would work fine. Obviously, Salsa offers a similar drop out adapter for the aluminum Mukluk, so a swinging drop out shouldn't be an issue from a technical stand point. Now getting the design, machining, and cost covered might be a different kettle of fish!

Good luck!

ps: LOVE the ride of the Ti Muk so far. Definitely worth it.