Hi all
Title says it all really. Looking at a salsa beargrease carbon or a canyon dude, whats the pros and cons?

Does the 121mm BB on the salsa limit crank choice?
Can a dude be run with 29×3 wheels and tyres for a summer racier bike?
Opinions please.

Thanks

Hard to beat a Canyon Dude from their bargain bike area. Carbon, good spec…

Beargrease is lovely though

Will you be Bluto-ing it? Canyons are available with blutos

I would go with the Canyon as it can take 4.8s should you want to fit them. Are the Salsa bikes still mental expensive? If yoyu can get it still, the pivot les fat would be a good option.

John

Beargrease is also carbon. And Salsa advertise it as being able to take 26, 27.5+ and 29+ wheel/tyre combos.

Les Fat looks amazing, have you seen the Aaron Chase vid? £2k+ for frameset though.

Canyon looks best value for money but would like to know if you can wheel swap.

have ridden both, salsa is lovely, dude is superlight (not ridden the bluto version) if it was my money i’d go Salsa

try asking on the fatbikeuk group on FB, loads of owners of both on there

nice choices. if I was flush, I’d go beargrease. I ride an ICT ops as my main fatty. but I’ve just bought a Sonder vir fortis, to get my carbon fix, it’s nearly finished, and should come out around 26-27lb.
have a look at the 9zero7 carbon whiteout, if you want super light racer/everything. they build up sub-20lb for racing. pretty sure you can go 29er+ on the BG as well.

I’d say get a dude…but then I’ve got one so I’m a bit biased.

There’s a Canyon dude group on facebook.
Just looked at the group and the first pic is of a dude with 29+ wheels and Chupacabra (bluto forks)
The guy does say it raises the height a little.

I’m probably going to go with 27.5+ and 3.0 tyres..

Two models of the dudes have money off at the moment

I think this bike shop in Ambleside had a Medium Salsa beargrease on offer..
https://www.ghyllside.co.uk/

Open to correction here pretty sure the Polaris sale had some Beargreases on offer at crazy low prices. By crazy I mean still damned expensive but 50% or more off the madness price.

EDIT – having followed the link above I assume the ones I saw were a higher model, is there a Bear something else?

I have a dude (rigid) and run it with 29er wheels (34mm rims) , currently running Nobby Nics 2.6 at around 15 psi, fast and loads of grip. Plenty of space to fit 3″ tyres.

Well I’m obviously a bit biased having just bought a Dude, but I did look carefully at a number of other options. It’s hard to beat the Canyon on price. You can buy a full bike for less than most other frames. Even if you do what I did and replace pretty much everything, you’ve still got some bits that you can sell to recoup some costs. That wasn’t really the issue for me though. I’d happily have bought a more expensive frame (which would probably have better support if things go wrong), but everything else I looked at was either a bit too steep in the head angle, or a bit too slack in the seat angle, or couldn’t take my 197 rear wheel. The Beargrease was in the latter category, but if I didn’t have the wheels already I’d have been seriously tempted by the Beargrease as everything else looks spot on. Charlie the Bikemonger is even knocking out the orange and pink frames for £1,300 !

There is a nice Carbon Beargrease for sale on the uk Fatbikes fb page. £3k

Old thread I know.. But anyone looking for a salsa beargrease carbon..
Merlin’s are selling them for £1260
https://www.merlincycles.com/salsa-beargrease-carbon-nx1-fat-bike-2018-108245.html

Obviously the answer to the original question is, neither, they should buy my Surly in the classifieds 🙂

It’s interesting how even a 40% reduction fails to generate any interest these days though. A year back I’m sure people would have been all over this one. In fact, if I didn’t already have a Dude I’d be tempted by that Beargrease (if only because I’m a sucker for an orange frame). The 27.5 x 4 size never really took off, presumably because it was launched just as interest in fatbikes faded, but it makes a lot of sense. Similar diameter and volume to a 26×5 but a bit narrower. I guess by that argument you should go to 29×3 though and that didn’t take off either.

Wow I’d missed your ad RP

If I had the cash spare atm I’d buy it off you for sure. My fav colour too!

The fat bike forum seems down today but might be worth sticking the ad on there too once it’s back up.

Thanks NM. Yes, I noticed the fatbike forum seemed to be down today. I think I’ll probably end up splitting the ICT, so it might make more sense to advertise it over there as there will be more people who have wheels, frame etc already. No rush really though. It’s taken me the best part of a year to decide which of the two fatbikes to keep and which to sell. I’m still not sure I made the right call, but much of my fatbike riding is exploring new bits of the map and if nothing else, the Dude is a bit easier to carry when the trail runs out altogether. Hopefully somebody will give the Truck a good home though as it’s a great fun bike.

Roverpig – what height are you on that large ICT? Are you on Decide somewhere?

That orange Beargrease seems to have mounts on the fork for bike packing accessories as far as i can see but the descriptions don’t mention it – anyone ale to confirm?

Thanks RP.

I kind of think you have kept the wrong bike, but I am Surly biased! I am in line to borrow some Moloko bars next for my Pug btw (totally OT I know).

It is bad timing, otherwise I’d have snapped the ICT up. Oh well.

All the best with the sale.

I’m 6′ tall. Or was last time I measured 🙂

The stack on the ICT is very low (as you can see by the number of spacers I’m using along with 40mm riser bars) and the reach is OK but not overly long by modern standards. So I reckon it would be fine for people shorter than 6′ but I wouldn’t fancy it if I were much taller.

Not sure what you mean by “Decide” though?

Autocorrect strikes again – I meant to say are you on Deeside / In Aberdeenshire? It’s a moot point now anyway as I think it is too small.

Ah right. Yes, Aberdeenshire. It’s all personal preference I guess. Reach on my large ICT is 440mm, but stack is only 601mm. Effective top tube is 630mm. I ran a 35mm stem and that was fine for me, but I wouldn’t have wanted it any shorter.

Having said that, it’s interesting that I seemed to climb faster on this heavier ICT than I do on my lighter Dude and suffered much less with back pain the day after. The Dude has a reach of 455mm a stack of 652mm and an effective top tube length of 442mm. The slower times and stiffness may just be down to getting old, but maybe there are some downsides to a longer bike that I hadn’t considered before.

Roverpig it’s worth also looking at the seat angles between both bikes as that could be the over all effect on your climbing it might actually be steeper on the ict. My buddy was literally about to hit buy last night Ona lathe beargrease carbon when it went sold out lol. He’s a bit gutted I think. Quit a bargain

I kind of think you have kept the wrong bike

You could be right 🙂 I put a Surly Bud on the front and took the ICT out again tonight. Just to say goodbye, you understand. But there is something indefinable about it. It seems silly when the tyres are so big, but it does just feel more “springy”. I still think I’ll sell it though. I’ve agreed to sell my Five and I’m toying with the idea of going for the new Cotic Flare Max as a trail bike. I couldn’t have two blue steel bikes 🙂

The climbing times are doing my head in though. How can a steel bike climb faster than a carbon one that is 5lb lighter? If it were just one or two climbs I’d dismiss it as just having a good day or something. But it’s true for almost every climb of note that I’ve ridden on both bikes. It’s the same wheels on both bikes too with the only difference there being that the Dude had a 4.4″ JJ on the back and the ICT a 4.8″ JJ. Maybe the heavier 4.8″ tyre rolls better than the 4.4″, but it sounds unlikely. I’ve never heard anybody recommend a 5″ tyre for XC ! batman11 mentions seat angle, which is a good point. But (if we believe the geometry charts) the seat angle on the Dude is steeper (74) than the ICT (72.5)

Tonight’s ride only had one climb of note, but it’s one I’ve done 78 times on five different bikes. Sure enough, fastest time was set on the ICT (although only a few seconds faster than my best time on the Smuggler as it’s only a short climb). Top six times are ICT, Smuggler, ICT, Smuggler, Solaris, Dude with the best time on the Dude being 13% slower than the best time on the ICT.

Tonight there was a sprinkling of snow on the first part of the climb and I wasn’t expecting to be fast at all, especially with the Bud on the front, but I was still faster than all the recent times on the Dude. In fact I’ve got to go back 15 rides to early May to find a faster time (in much better conditions, with a JJ on the front).

It’s bonkers !