Sunday, December 16, 2012

Krampus for Christmas?

 Surly Krampus

What Surly says about the Krampus:
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about fat bikes such as our Pugsley and Moonlander, bikes with massive 4 and 5˝ tires designed to crawl over and through unusual or difficult terrain. These types of bikes are all about stability, traction, and floatation.
The Krampus is not the same animal. True, it’s got bigger-than-usual tires (29 x 3˝ Knard tires on 50mm Rabbit Hole rims, to be exact), a platform we have dubbed “29+”. But as you may know, we’re not the kind of people to just throw on bigger-than-usual tires for no reason, or to attract attention. While the big tires are impossible to ignore, and do in fact offer increased traction and some degree of float, don’t assume that these big tires are only for slow speed crawling. The Krampus’s frame (geometry, tubing diameter and thickness) has been designed with a long toptube and as short a rear end as we could get away with. This, when combined with the big, wide tires, results in a mad amount of rolling inertia and grip. It can go real fast. It responds well to body English.
So Krampus rolls fast, holds speed, corners like it’s on rails, etc. At this point you may be thinking, “Wha? Surly make race bike?” Well no, not exactly. It’s still a Surly…durable, slightly overbuilt. It does exceedingly well rolling over all kinds of stuff, things you’d normally think you’d need suspension to tangle with. Krampus lives somewhere between bushwhacking, speed racing, and back lot dirt track riding, and all this makes it just plain fun to ride.

No comments:

Post a Comment