Surly goes BIG(ger...)

The guys and girls at Surly don’t seem to pay much attention to trends and fashion following and have always come up with designs that seem to puzzle 90% of the world and delight the other 10… Having made the first production snow bike with the Pugsley, you’d think that they’d be happy with that – but no, if the 3.7in tyres of the Pugsley were good, then surely 4.7in tyres are even better…

Enter the Moonlander!

The Moonlander. Now where's the nearest snow/beach/swamp?

It still uses 135mm spaced hubs front and rear and works with Surly’s 100mm wide Clownshoe rim (below) and a 26in x 4.7 tire. MWOD (Mr. Whirly Offset Double) cranks required along with a longer spindle.

Due Dates in the USA: frameset: Late September 2011, complete bike: Mid-December 2011

And if big is good, then bigger is better. Here’s the 100mm wide Clown Shoe Rim… The 64 spoke holes are so you can run offset or non-offset hubs. They’ll work perfectly with…

The Big Fat Larry Tyre

4.7in! Or 120mm… It’ll still fit a Pugsley, though you’ll lose a few gear options… For sheer comedy value, we love these. For serious snow work, they’re probably also good… Roll on winter!

There are other great things over on the Surly Blog, where they’ve basically given away most of their trade show surprises. Have a peek now…

http://www.surlybikes.com/blog/

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

Comments (13)

evenfastersonevenfasterson August 26, 2011 at 4:34 pm

Puzzling 90% or people and delighting the other 10% is no way to make any money…

ashfanmanashfanman August 26, 2011 at 4:46 pm

They’ve been running (as a business, not a charity) since 1998, so apparently it is.

I’d say that Surly only puzzling 90 percent is a little generous, however…

ChippsChipps August 26, 2011 at 4:48 pm

“Puzzling 90% or people and delighting the other 10% is no way to make any money…”

It’s what Singletrack has been doing for a decade too 🙂

ashfanmanashfanman August 26, 2011 at 5:02 pm

The only difference being that with Singletrack, the 90% are its customers… 😉

AlexSimonAlexSimon August 26, 2011 at 5:38 pm

Incredible looking machine. I’d love to have a go on one across some sand dunes, snow, or even the moon.

showermanshowerman August 26, 2011 at 6:45 pm

are they tubeless rims:)

MotormanMotorman August 26, 2011 at 7:29 pm

Loving the thumbshifters!

Looks like we just entered the era of the obese-bike!

thomthumbthomthumb August 27, 2011 at 1:15 pm

“Puzzling 90% or people and delighting the other 10% is no way to make any money…”

Jordan is worth £ 30 Million.

coastkidcoastkid August 28, 2011 at 6:21 am

Got my Moonlander on order… cant wait!

freegan bikefascistfreegan bikefascist August 29, 2011 at 8:08 am

that’s about 40 kinds of bonkers, I love it but (sadly) can’t think of a use for it in my world. Perhaps I should change my world

dafergdaferg August 30, 2011 at 12:11 pm

I guess that is the tubes bulging out through the rims??
Probably won’t be running 1.85-2.10 tubes in there then! Actually, maybe you could run multi tubes in each wheel? reliability through redundancy?!

OnzadogOnzadog August 30, 2011 at 4:02 pm

I want one. I don’t know why or where I’d ever use it, but I want one.

AdamMAdamM September 10, 2011 at 11:15 am

Can’t wait to see the pictures from Coastkid riding his all over the beaches and dunes!