Anyone ride a fatbike.

[Comedian]

Looking at buying my first Fatbike, I would really love a late model SCOTT Big Jon. But boy are they hard to get in Australia, I am also looking at the Cannondale CAAD bikes and Diamant Fatbikes (F1,2,3,4). I have also looked at Salted Bikes (made in Aus) but am unsure about them.

Any thoughts?

The big manufacturers I think found there isn't enough market for them. I think mostly the new options are one of those listed.. essentially custom.

There are still quite a few on gumtree though.. some with very minimal use.

[muzza22au]

Looking at buying my first Fatbike, I would really love a late model SCOTT Big Jon. But boy are they hard to get in Australia, I am also looking at the Cannondale CAAD bikes and Diamant Fatbikes (F1,2,3,4). I have also looked at Salted Bikes (made in Aus) but am unsure about them.

Any thoughts?

The big manufacturers I think found there isn't enough market for them. I think mostly the new options are one of those listed.. essentially custom.

There are still quite a few on gumtree though.. some with very minimal use.

I may just use my current MTB and set that up for some bike packing trips and see if its going to be viable, if I am still keen by the end of the year and am finding limitations with my current setup I will re-visit this idea.

[Comedian]

Looking at buying my first Fatbike, I would really love a late model SCOTT Big Jon. But boy are they hard to get in Australia, I am also looking at the Cannondale CAAD bikes and Diamant Fatbikes (F1,2,3,4). I have also looked at Salted Bikes (made in Aus) but am unsure about them.

Any thoughts?

The big manufacturers I think found there isn't enough market for them. I think mostly the new options are one of those listed.. essentially custom.

There are still quite a few on gumtree though.. some with very minimal use.

I may just use my current MTB and set that up for some bike packing trips and see if its going to be viable, if I am still keen by the end of the year and am finding limitations with my current setup I will re-visit this idea.

Fat bikes really do ride well. Far better than you'd think and they don't roll that much more slowly than an MTB.

But - unless you want to ride on sand/snow then the MTB should be fine.

[sunrk]

After two years I've re-started my aborted build of a nice Salted 'popcorn' fatbike. Replacing the tyres (both the Vee's are cracked on the outside so I deemed them unsafe) and the tube for the rear tyre has a hole.

I had to replace both the Sram DB5 brakes as they'd both siezed and found some Sram Trail TL's to replace them which I've now fitted.

I'm going with Schwalbe 'Jumbo Jim' tyres as they're available in 26 x 4.8 size in Australia.

When I originally was building the bike I made the Sram 1130 chain a little bit too long so I'll be shortening it by a few links.

As this is the first modern bicycle I've had for a while (I did have an Atomik Gravity for a while but didn't really like it), it's going to take a bit of getting used to how the sram gear shifting works.

If anyone else has built up their own Salted/Dirtworks fatbike kit did you come across any problems or issues that you had to resolve during the build? It's been a learning curve for me as it's a lot different to my old Repco mtb I had back in my high school days of the 1980's.

Craig.