Hello lovely Surly customers. Since I’m the person that has generally been answering the phone when you call lately I notice trends in what all you crazies ask for and want from us. Sometimes it’s only a vocal minority of people, other times it’s a deluge of opinion from nearly all you and lately I’ve notice a trend amongst people wondering about the fork options they have for our 2014 fat bikes. There was some conflicting info on the website after we did our fancy upgrades, and for that we apologize.
Currently all of our frames (except the black Pugsley, which will come without a fork) and complete bikes will be coming with non-offset Moonlander forks. This has bummed a few of you out, but sadly those few are the minority. You are a vocal minority, which you should be proud of, but for 90% of our customers this spec change will not affect you because the majority of you have been wanting the centered Moonlander fork.
Some of you may be saying “How could you? One of the hallmarks of Pugsley design was the ability to set the bike up such that you could build an offset single speed front wheel and swap it for the rear wheel if one was to find one’s self in a rear derailleur FUBAR situation.” Anyone that says that, in my view, is correct. But fear not, this is not a permanent change and those of you that want to get offset forks will be able to do so in the near future. The completes and frames will continue to come with the centered Moonlander forks, but there will be an aftermarket offset option.
As we have brought bikes like the Krampus out, and redesigned forks for the Karate Monkey we’ve learned a thing or two about how to make our forks better and we’re doing the same thing to the offset Pugsley forks. We’re hoping to have model year 2014 color matched forks available in the beginning of the winter and they’ll be better than ever. It’ll be as if Steve Austin and Bruce Banner had a baby, named that baby Thor, that baby then goes to MIT, completes an engineering degree in, like, thirty-five days, graduates Summa Cum Laude, gets a job with us, then sits down and makes new Pug forks. They’ll be that sweet, trust me. The upshot here is that if you don’t care, or want to be able to run an even bigger front tire on your Pugsley, you’ll be able to do that without issue. Hopefully that puts some minds at ease, but if it doesn’t, give us a call and ask us questions. I like to talk about bikes more than any one person should.