Cycleworks in Haslemere have a Spesh Fatboy in blue, Med/17.5 for half price £750 from £1500. 4.8 tyres? definitely on the larger side.

NICE! That a great price for someone.

I finally fitted my Bluto, took me a bit of faffing to drop the lowers and install a longer air shaft but the whole process was straightforward and rewarding.
First impressions, well, aesthetically I was a bit gutted as I had just got the bike set up in all its yellow glory, with orange trim, but without the big yellow fork it’s lost a little of its charm IMO

However, as part of my air shaft swap I took someones advice of switching to Slick Honey fork grease, and by George does the Bluto feel good first ride out! Plusshhhhhh.
Once im over the man flu ill take it for a proper ride and get a true feel for my new found boing.

That is a good price… Especially when I was just looking at the on one fatty trail with Bluto 120mm RL and reverb for £600.

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/ZX121FATTY/on-one-fatty-trail-frame,-fork–and-seatpost-bundle?utm_source=The+Planet+X+and+On-One+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=eec56aba25-100117&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_561486488b-eec56aba25-271317897&mc_cid=eec56aba25&mc_eid=e7dd893310

Those frame/dropper/fork bundles, including the Fatty Trail/ Reverb/ Blut,o have all dropped at least £100 since the e-mail I got ~2.5 hours ago and posted about earlier! 😆

At £500, it’s a very good deal.

Fit the fork and dropper to your current fatbike and keep the Trail frame as a spare, or build it up as a singlespeed; rigid etc.

I’m tempted to buy one and build up a fatbike.. but how much is a decent set of wheels? And are the hub sizes needed for the on one standard and can be swapped to another frame in general? Or are they some odd ball that is useless on most other fatbike frames?

It’s 170QR rear, which IMO is almost certainly going to be one of the losing standards. But it’s not oddball, exactly, it’s just that fat standards still aren’t settled. As long as you get a hub that’ll swap for 177 bolt-through you’re reasonably safe, there’s a lot of 177 rear frames out there. And it’s not like there’s anything wrong with teh Fatty Trail frame anyway.

(I think 197 is going to be the overall winner tbh, there’s little drawback to it, but it’s the bike industry so who knows? Maybe 189.5 will replace all the standards)

TBH wheels are always tricky- wheels and tyres do so much to define how a fatbike rides. On One sell a 3kg set for £300 which use the same OE spec rims as you get on a Dune, pretty cheap heavy stuff for a £300 wheelset but it’ll do the job well enough. Halo Tundra might be better, not sure (same rim again but with different cutouts)… Or maybe you could find a used set…

It’s not ideal but I have the wheels from my Dune. The front’d fit, the rear wouldn’t, it’d need a new hub. But they’d be cheap 😉

Yeah I see what you mean about standards for hub sizes on the fat bike..googled a few fatbike to check the specs:
Trek Farley 9 150/197
Specalized Fatboy 135/190
Scott Big Ed 150/197
Surly ICT 150/197

Seems 150/197 is the norm..
So the on one with 170 rear isn’t going to lend itself to much use if you decide to swap the frame for something else..

Agreed. IMO, it’s why they’re pretty much giving the frames away now.
Hope have also stopped producing the 170 hubs.

I wonder if we’ll see a Fatty V3 this side of 2018?

Hope have stopped producing 170/177 hubs???? Still listed as current on their pro4 section of their website. The 170 hub shell is the same as the 177, which is still current for many 4″ fattys such as:
Salsa bsargrease
Mukluk
Surely Wednesday
Smokestone Henderson
On one trail

Plus more, the truth is 197 isn’t needed for 4″ fat bikes and the fact that some fattys with 177 and 100bb fat bikes can run upto the minion sized fatty rubber on br710’s, I’m still not sure why anyone would want a wider rear end. I can’t see the benefit (personally). As I see it now their are two fat bike standard which are hear to stay 177 for 4.0 and 197 for 5.0. I can’t see either disappearing soon

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/CBOOFATCFNX/on-one-fatty-sram-nx1-fat-bike £800 with carbon fork

I doubt we’ll see another rear-hub standard for fatbikes for a while because there are few 190/197mm rear frames that’ll take the biggest currently tyre available, Snowshoe 2XLs. The original 2XL prototypes were actually bigger at 5.6″ but production were smaller. 2XLs aren’t really needed except for deep snow – I’m running one up front on mine as I’m off to the arctic next month. Likewise, 150mm is now the defacto front hub standard and fatbike cranks have settled on 120mm spindles. Whilst an even bigger tyre would give more float, it’s actually quite difficult to ride deep snow because the conditions change – you fall off (a lot) and even getting the bike upright and remounting is tricky when you’re up to your knees in snow – you just end up pushing anyway.

Got to say, having rode my Fatty Trail hard on some pretty rough singletrack – I have no problem with the 170mm QR. The bike is just as stable as the Chief and Bird were (both bolt thru rear maxles) and is loooaaads more fun. Happy Chappy.

It’s not like we really needed bolt thru axles on any standard – they just became/are becoming the norm.

I don’t think I can even tell the difference in riding, I just quite like the aesthetic and simplicity of the design. I find fitting the rear wheel easier too.

There’s definitely nothing wrong with QR 170 in use, but that wasn’t the question.

£500 for that’s an amazing deal. Shame I’d get shot for buying it. Nvm

Anotherstan just listed a set of halo tundra wheels in for sale that’d perfect for one of those OOFT frame-and-fork kits. They’re not posh (same rims as the Emmenthals) but they’re a great buy assuming they’re in good nick. He’s got X5 cranks for it too.

Just sayin.

I got some br710’s on hope hubs for sale as well which would be perfect!

I left a message on your For Sale thread Russy – im probably not your best customer though, as I need a 190 rear hub – and i’m a tight ar$e

Slimjim calling Northwind – Am thinking of purchasing a pair of BR710’s and building up on (probably) Hope Fatsno’s – how did you find the spoke calculators when configuring your fat wheel build?
Also, anything ‘odd’ i need to consider regarding sourcing hubs and spacing on the Dune?
Have heard a 3 cross pattern is best for heavyweight fat builds – do you concur?
Finally, did you go tubeless on your 710’s using the OE rim strips?

Can’t help with the spoke lengths, so I’ll leave that to Northwind, but I set up my BR710 rims tubeless just using duct tape of the right width. If I did it again I’d look for a less absorbent tape, but they were easy to set up and have been running just fine since May (with Jumbo Jim, Bud and Lou tyres at various times).

On the back of my Fatbike only MTB thread I’m just looking at the Dunes v Fatty v Fatty trail.

Is the Fatty trail worth the extra over the dune? Is the regular Fatty £250 better? I’d have thought that the trail would be worth extra just for the bluto, the extra reach is just a bonus.

I see there’s a large Dune too now, hmmmm.

I got my BR710s tubeless using this PVC tape: http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Adhesives+%26+Sealants/d180/Tapes/sd2420/Polythene+Jointing+Tape/p69026

I also trimmed a couple of mm from each side of the original rim strip to give more rim area for the tape to stick to. After fitting the tape, inflated with a tube to 20psi, left overnight, removed the bead from one side, removed tube, fitted tubeless valve, lay wheel on bucket (unseated bead face down) then ghetto compressor @ 60psi to seat it again. Whacked in the sealant – job’s a good ‘un.

slimjim78 – Member

Slimjim calling Northwind – Am thinking of purchasing a pair of BR710’s and building up on (probably) Hope Fatsno’s – how did you find the spoke calculators when configuring your fat wheel build?
Also, anything ‘odd’ i need to consider regarding sourcing hubs and spacing on the Dune?
Have heard a 3 cross pattern is best for heavyweight fat builds – do you concur?
Finally, did you go tubeless on your 710’s using the OE rim strips?

I used DT Big Ride hubs but it’s all the same really. Watch the offset, is the only trick. I rashly assumed that DT’s own calculator with all their parts would give the right answer but even after choosing the parts which autofills all the settings, you have to manually change some of the autofilled settings in the calculator. Dicks. I did 3 cross but I’m no expert, it just seems to be the default. They were the first wheels I’d ever built but it all went pretty smoothly once Bencooper shortened all the spokes for me.

Tubeless… The BR rim strip is just a cloth strip, no good for tubeless. Apparently there was supposed to be a DT tubeless kit but they never made it. The rims are weird for that, they’re not that easy to inflate a tyre on but they have a proper tubeless ready locking bead, so it’s a mix of pain in the arse to set up, but perfect once up. Kind of half ghetto.

I sealed mine with PVC tape- and I think a little gorilla tape to improve the fit, the huge cutouts mean there’s really not much metal left to tape to. So I had a narrower “rim strip” which is the bit you see, which is PVC tape sticky side up. And then a slightly wider band of the same over that to seal it. TBH it was a pain in the cock. Fatty Strippers might be the better option! But I’m really pleased with it, it’s light and reliable and I wanted the yellow

All in all they’re not perfect but they’re still bloody good rims. I was tempted towards chupacabras for the tubelessness but they’re heavier… And I couldn’t find a carbon one that seemed to have as good balance, I didn’t want to go narrower. So I’d buy them again if I had to.

Slightly different ‘build kit’. But I’ve a Large Fatty Trail (new), On-one wheelset (used), X5 cranks (used, with new-ish gusset BB), floaters (lightly used). Basically a bluto short of everything you’d need to build a fat bike from the contents of your spares box (brakes, finishing kit, etc).

Bought with the intention of building a bluto’d fat bike, but redundancy kaiboshed that plan. £300 if anyone’s interested (£250 collected from Reading).

Thanks for the feedback NW. TBH, I thought that I recalled your set up going swimmingly so its deflating to hear that tubeless set up is also a bollock-ache on the 710s.

I think you’re right on the fattystripper front though – in fact, the best results I’ve had on my Dune wheelset is to ‘copy’ a fattystripper rim tape of sorts by glueing an extra wide exercise band into a loop using standard puncture repair glue (a nice thin smear over a good 3″ square surface area – once cured it creates a nice sealed loop much like the fatty stripper version (god knows where they source their loops, I assume they glue them in-house).
In the end though, I’ve simply ordered a pair of fattystrippers for when I next need to set up tubeless.

Have been offered a pair of new 710’s for £210 – so am very tempted to go ahead at this price. If there was an obvious better choice for my riding id be tempted (clown shoes? chinese carbon?), but the weight savings and DT quality swing it 710s direction currently.
Having said that, I noticed a rider weight limit on them which I would be pushing slightly past.. whats the worst that could happen right?

In other news, im yet to hear my Floaters ‘ping’ onto the Dune rims – in fact when set up at around 11psi I can still effectively push the tyre off the sidewall with my fingertips and hear air escape. I have inflated them to 40psi and awaited expectantly for the snap (or explosion) to take place, but nothing. I note above that one chap inflated to 60psi – dare i try this?

I note above that one chap inflated to 60psi – dare i try this?

No, mine exploded at 20psi (although On-One to their credit replaced it FOC so they may/may not have strengthened them since then). If it’s on the rim evenly then it’s seated as well as it’s going to.

Ah, ok. Yes, it’s nice and even. I had better crank down the pressure then (gulp)

Just noticed I can import a pair of BR710’s from .DE for around £180. Looks a way better deal than I’ve been offered.
With around 10-20% off Hope Fatsno’s at CRC at the moment, it looks like a reasonable price can be had for a nice wheelset (around £440 all in pending spoke price) if willing to build yourself.

I never had the tyres ping on the Dune rims either, from memory. It’s just one of those things, not all rims ping, depends on the bead shelf and the pressures involved.

slimjim78 – Member

Thanks for the feedback NW. TBH, I thought that I recalled your set up going swimmingly so its deflating to hear that tubeless set up is also a bollock-ache on the 710s.

It’s a totally different level of bollock-ache compared to the Dune rims tbh. With one, you’re basically doing tubeless from scratch, with the other the rim is probably halfway there already. Not ideal but not the same thing

Also, to be fair I probably made it harder for myself with my yellow rim tape obsession 😆

10%off at gooutdoors until next Tuesday , if anyone fancies a dune for £540.
Code 10JAN17

/\ dont forget topcashback!

Anyone put a Bluto on a Dune yet? Might swap the still not sorted bossnut for a Dune depending on how my ride on friday goes. Tempted by the lack of maintenance at the moment but might want to put a fork on when the cash allows, but the seat tube is pretty slack already.

Half tempted but a fatty trail, but put off by the narrower hub spacing, it also means finding a bit more cash which I’m loathe to do as a certified cheapskate and pauper.

yeah I fitted a Bluto a couple of weeks ago – I bought one of the cheap 80mm versions at CTBM and sourced a 90mm air shaft for about £15 which I fitted myself (learnt a shed load about the fork in the process). Seems about spot on at this length, may be tempted by a 100mm air shaft at some point but not sure i’d go any longer.

I haven’t been out on it much since but that will change this week, the limited mileage i’ve done so far has proven very favourable – it just feels like a sorted hardtail now.

If given the choice of Fatty Trail or Bluto’d Dune again – i’d personally pick the Dune every time.
Also, I still have the rigid fork of course, which means if I ever need to remove the Bluto for any length of time I can still ride. But in all honesty, once you’ve had one of these solo air Rock Shox apart you’ll appreciate how easy they are to maintain and replace parts as required. Just invest in some basics from the start (seals/fork grease/suspension oil/circlip pliers) and you’ll be good to go for years.

Will add some pics soon. Also picked up a bargain Mulefut SL wheelset this week so really looking forward to a painless tubeless set-up

For anyone just wanting to try a simple & quick set up for tubeless – I bought some cheap 24″ fat tubes off On One & ghetto-ed them. Kept the original rim strip & applied plenty of soap on the floaters, blew them up to about 20-25 psi & then left them hanging over a hot radiator for a few hours. With the air expanding & the rubber becoming more supple with the heat, they seated nicely…

Bluto’d Dune

Looks good that.

I’m off for the definitive test ride on Friday morning, so should have decided what to do in the afternoon. Today I’m veering towards sticking with the normal bike, I’d love a fatty, but as an only MTB I’m not sure. We’ll see

Does look the biz with a Bluto tho.

It’s now my only MTB – as other Fatsters will attest, once you’ve ridden fat for a while and then try riding a ‘normal’ bike it just feels plain wrong!
I just love the grip levels available.

After 20 miles round Wharncliffe on Monday my wrists say they want a Bluto!
But once again, the Dune acquitted itself well, from Steel City to Wharncouver’s berms it took the lot in its stride. And it excelled in the rootier trails and slower techy rock sections.

Ooh, like the Blutoed Dune. It’s on my to-do list fo sho.

Very nice slimjim.

Looks good. Did you change the tyre pressures at all with the Bluto? I’m toying with adding a Bluto in the summer, but I keep reading about folk increasing tyre pressures “to make the fork work”, which kind of defeats the purpose of the big fat tyres I would have thought. But I’ve not tried it, so it’s all just speculation.