WARNING: Long rambling thoughts ahead. Look away now if that isn’t your cup of tea. Maybe have a cup of tea instead.

OK, I know there are a few of these threads around, but they mostly consist of people with front suspension on their fatbikes claiming that it’s a game-changer and people without claiming that it’s unnecessary. Having put in over a hundred hours on my ICT in rigid form and now (a whopping) four with the Bluto, I thought I’d pass on my own thoughts.

The reason for trying one was simply that I find myself reaching for the fatbike on pretty much every ride these days. It just suits me and where/how I like to ride. But the one thing I can’t do on it is ride fast over rough ground and I miss that.

Of course, the comments that it’s a game-changer and unnecessary are not mutually exclusive. It clearly is unnecessary since plenty of people (myself included) have fun on rigid bikes. But anybody who has ridden a rigid bike and a hardtail will be aware that there is quite a difference. But is it a good difference or a bad difference? Well it’s neither, of course, just different, but there are a few things to consider.

First we’ll start with the bad points:

Price: at around £500 for a stretched Reba the Bluto is hardly cheap. Since many people are having fun on fatbikes that didn’t cost much more than a Bluto all up, the price alone could rule it out for many. Of course, no sooner had I placed my order than I started reading the rumours about the new Manitou Mastadon fork, which is rumoured to be stiffer, have more clearance and may even be cheaper than the Bluto. If nothing else, it should mean that there will be lots of cheap second hand Blutos on the market as everyone jumps onto the new fork.

Weight: A suspension fork is almost always going to be heavier than a rigid one. In my case the steel fork on the ICT is no lightweight, but I’ve probably still added a pound to an already heavy bike (couldn’t be bothered to weigh it properly I’m afraid). On the plus side that’s less than the difference in weight between my summer (JJ) and winter (Bud/Lou) tyres and since I’m planning to only run suspension in the summer I reckon I’m just about even. If you are coming from a lighter carbon or aluminium fork though, it might be more of an issue.

Note that for the purposes of these first couple of rides I left the Bud/Lou on in order to avoid changing two things at one (and because I’m lazy).

Stiffness: I have to include this as everyone moans about it not being stiff enough. It’s become a shibboleth that 32mm stanchions aren’t stiff enough on a mountain bike although I do wonder whether everyone who says that is really feeling it and not just repeating what they’ve heard. Personally I’ve not felt it yet, but it’s early days. I doubt the steel ICT fork was that stiff and anyway a 5″ wheel running at 6psi is hardy a precision instrument at the best of times. That’s part of the fun really.

Climbing: I like the way you can stand up and honk on a rigid bike. It’s the old roadie in me. A suspension fork takes away a bit of that direct feel, but with the lockout on I didn’t feel like I was missing much.

On the plus side, there is only really one, which is that it does what it says on the tin i.e. I can go much faster over rough ground without risking rattling my eyeballs out of their sockets. “Which is nice”.