Salsa Full-Suspension Fatbike...
QBP [aka Quality Bike Parts] owns a lot of bike companies you are familiar with such as Surly and Salsa. For a big company they seem to be cool with a lot of bikey weirdness – which is a good thing. Salsa is showing off a prototype FS fatbike – seen above. Another QBP company 45 North is pimping a prototype fatbike studded tire – seen below. Neither product is available for sale yet, but they both look promising.
Did they have a name for the proto’ FS fattie? Just curious…
Not that i am aware of. There were some additional photos floating around FB that might have shown a placard, but I don’t recall the details if I saw them.
No name for it yet. The placard said “Full Suspension Fatbike Prototype” It is a thing of beauty.
i thought the whole idea behind a fat bike was that you didn’t need any suspension. what am i missing here?
@Alan – the whole idea behind fat bikes is big tires. Big tires give you floatation on soft surfaces and some suspension effect [ say 0.5" - 1"] if they are inflated appropriately.
Less than 1″ of suspension is certainly better than no suspension, but you use up such limited travel pretty fast and you are then on a rigid bike.
A FS fat bike gives you the very fast reacting supple tire casing suspension of the fat tires [for small high frequency bumps] and adds the slower suspension capability of a fork/shock for medium and big hits.
You don’t need a FS fat bike to crawl across sand or snow. You probably don’t want one for this type of use. However, more and more people are MTBing with fat bikes and for high speed riding over rough terrain suspension is very useful.
@Alan – the other thing to consider is that if Salsa comes to market with a FS fat bike that will mean there is a production fat compatible suspension fork available and if so you’ll see a whole slew of hardtail fat bike options as well.
Just like with the current MTB market you’ll have rigids, hardtails and FS bikes.
Thanks Vik!