Only riding 2 of my 4 bikes mostly these days the Surly Wednesday with it's 29+ wheels on is my go to trail bike, with the New SURLY Pugsley 2.0 waiting on a Surly Moonlander fork arriving to allow fitment of 100mm wide rims (Moonlander) wheels and 4.8" tyres to use as my go to Beach bike,
From the side you could be mistaken The Surly Wednesday is a Surly Krampus - Surly`s 29+ trail weapon, as the Geometry is near identical between the bikes...
If you have not read up on the Surly Wednesday you can on Surly Website
Here...The frame set is a no thrills regular 4130 tube with no fancy drawn tubes and has all the bottle cage mounts you need, big triangle for a big frame bag, easy to access rear brake calliper for easy rear wheel removal (More below) with neat drop outs, and threaded BB so can be built on a budget with cheap parts, The complete bike is good value as is the frame set only option available here in the UK for under £600 if you shop around,
So you have a Fatbike that takes 4.4" tyres with bolt through axles on a 150 front hub, 177 rear, has routing for a dropper post and the 150mm front hub is Suspension fork ready,
I decided to remove the dropper seat post and suspension fork to keep the bike more basic with less to go wrong...
I still have the fork and dropper post, now boxed incase I do want to refit them at some point in the future, but for the trails around here in East Lothian they are not necessary...
The bikes beach wheels will only get used soon if there is a problem with the new Pugsley,
These wheels are 80mm rims with Schwalbe Jumbo Jims -a 4.4 rear and 4.8" front...
For those interested look at the increase size of a 4.8" Schwalbe Jumbo Jim tyre on a 100mm rim (right) compared to a 80mm rim left in pic...
2 Bikes in one; Fat wheels and 29+;
Two bikes in one with a Fatbike, if the bike is designed to take 4.4" tyres, fitting 29+ only raises the Bottom Bracket height by only 10mm, which you will not notice in the bikes handling, with a 5" tyre fat bike the BB height should remain the same, this was one disadvantage of the original SURLY Pugsley when you fitted the 29+ wheels, but the idea is still genius!
The Surly Wednesday has clever horizontal drop outs with a vertical slot so removing the thru axle allows the rear wheel to easily come out, these I think are the best Surly drop outs for ease of use...
1 x 10 Cheap gearing and budget BB options...
With cheap Sram X5 cranks (used £50 oneBay) you can run cheap Shimano Deore Bottom Brackets using £8 Hope `Sram -Shimano` size BB shims for budget running,
These cranks are triple arm so I run a 30t narrow wide and a 22t granny gear bail out which has been used a lot recently on big climbs in the Local Lammermuir Hills...
The 11-40t Sunrace Chainrings are cheap at £43 and £15 for a Sram 10 speed nickel chain, £15 narrow wide chainring, and tucked in out of harms way a Shimano Zee short cage mech, and bombproof Microsoft Thumbshifter keeps everything no thrills but functional...
Hope conversion shims to allow Shimano size BB to be run on SRAM cranks
I like these simple cranks as you cannot over load the tension on the bearings, they seem to be lasting for ages on this bike having only replaced them once in 3 years...
Bomber set up...
Thumb shifters rule!, I can actually change through several gears quicker with them than trigger shifters
Keep it simple...
I was given this Surly Wednesday frame set as a gift from Surly via Pat at ISON the UK Surly Importer/Distributor 4 years ago to ride and review and the bike is a great versatile frame set that really rewards the more effort you put into riding it.
I have managed to build a great trail bike with reliability and budget build being the main spec,
And this bike proves you don't need the latest £6000 all singing all dancing trail projectile,
From keeping up with friends on Enduro bikes at Glentress with plus wheels, Suspension fork, and dropper post fitted, to rock crawling on the coast on fat wheels, Bikepacked the Capital trail on 29+ and Fat wheels,
I have also managed to clean every hill in the Lammermuirs so far on this set up,
Riding a steel frame set with big 29+ wheels at an average 12 psi and slowing down a bit on technical trails and having to choose lines through instead of charging over on full suspension I find a more satisfying ride,
More soon...
