|   Riddle? | Cronometro
May 27, 2003 9:10 AM | | Riddle me this, how do you make a cross country MTB bike for a 300 lb, 6'-7" rider, that climbs, rips single track, is stable at speed and rides light like it weighs twenty pounds?
Answer: 22" Surly Karate Monkey with a nice mix of Salsa, Titec, WTB, and Shimano components.
I don't understand why it feels so light but it does. Maybe I never had a mountain bike that really fit me before. I am climbing stuff I could not clear before. The kind of stuff that ether your front wheel lifts up and you loose your momentum or your rear wheel spins out. This is really amazing because I have this nasty cold, so I am not that strong right now.
Any way the bike is sweeeeeeet. The ride is amazing. At least try one some time.
Greg.
BTW: Marty (martini) you were right the Delgado's a are the right way to go. |
| re: Riddle? | Cloxxki
May 27, 2003 10:29 AM | | Hey Greg, good to hear your KM works so well for you!
I'm tiny compared to you, 6'4" and 190lbs. To me, too, the 22" seems pretty light (I did build it to weigh under 12kg). This may have something to do with the wheelbase that is shorter than most 26" hardtail, that even have less toptube on it.
The higher placed axles of the 29" wheels have each other stick to the ground much better.
The big amount of steel used to build the frame, 2700g of it, and the freeride-proof headtube borrowed from the Instigator, should be the source of the responsiveness.
Acceleration out of corners on winding singletrack is unreal. Seems as fast as a stupid-light aluminum 26", but with the added steamroller effect. Plain fun.
We have to applaud Surly. First to take the step and come up with the first production frameset-only and even SS 29" offering. Secondly, because they hit the absolute sweetspot in 29" geometry and framebuilding at the first try. This design will be very hard to beat. Sure, an EBB would be welcome (heck, make it a 3kg hardtail frame). Building it as a dedicated SS would offer even more tire clearance. The fork would be even nicer disc-only. But, surly has a business to run. People buy the KM to run it wih gears, because they can. V's are way easy to set up, and saved my budd recently, when the rear disc failed on me with the SS Nationals around the corner.
Oh, the 23.6" seat tube length is a bit on the long side, even for my 39" inseam self (same seatpost extention as on my 60cm Surly roadbike!), so some people may have ground clearance issues.
But, all in all, the KM is really amazing, and I'd recommend it to anyone. With the added advantages of big wheels, it's almost fast enough to compensate the loss of gears on a race course, compared to a 26" all-out racer hardtail. Much more than I could ever dream it to.
So, who send the mail to MTBR to ask for a Karate Monkey forum? :-)
Happy trails,
J |
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