Monster, Monsteur, Monstour , 26/29+ and Expedition and Adventure bikes

pretty wild mone thing

A wheelbase which would make @amey envious.

Love his frames.

What is going on here? 36er? Or 29er with some very weird geo?

29x3.0 with very short wheelbase indeed

I see a few people are using Sram Rival Groupset any preference over sram force?

Cheaper?

Not my thing, but has this been discussed?
I found them searching "q factor", they make a fat bike (up to 4" tires) that uses a 73mm BB. Is that common?
http://www.tumbleweed.cc/

Yea super cool, and not too common. They've got lots of praise for their yoke design.

Crust Scapegoat can do the same, but im pretty sure you cant run a normal 1x setup cuz when running the biggest inner cog the chainline interferes with the 4" tire. They're usually built up with internal gear hubs or singlespeed in fatbike config. Or silly (cool) stuff like the stubby cassette

https://crustbikes.com/the-stubby-cassette/

That's pretty nutty, thanks.

What size retro mtb should I be looking at for a dirt drop build? Do I want to downsize a bit to run drops? 5'10 normal proportions.

Guessing 18" but this is all #internetbikefit territory

Sounds about right, can always switch out the super long stems they often have

Some sweet bikes in here.

Question for you all: is there such a thing as a tapered, 15mm through-axle, 29er fork with eyelets (etc.) that would take a Blackburn Outpost front rack? Want to buy the rack for a monstercross/frankenbike thing I'm building but it would be nice if I could also fit it to my modern "good" MTB on a new fork. Then I could have drop bars on an 90s MTB for light-duty bikepacking/touring/carrying shit around town and a straight-bar 29er for proper off-road bikepacking.

Surly do this which is what I want but with a straight steerer. (I believe you can get headset adapters or something to take a straight steerer but that's an extra level of faff that would probably result in me never swapping the fork.) Salsa do this but no mount points. Thoughts?

Alternatively is there any way to mount it on a suspension fork with no eyelets at all? 99.9% sure the answer is no unless there's some sort of 15mm-through-axle-adapter-and-huge-P-clamp combo that I can bodge it with.

The Salsa fork is nice, but (mine at least) is very forgiving, as such - you could get mounts brazed on, but I don't know that it would be tough enough for serious loaded abuse. Great to ride though, and it does cope with disc brake forces, so maybe it'd be fine, IANA framebuilder.

Both the Hope 1 1/8"-1 1/4" adapter, which you fit the crown race over, and the Cane Creek 1 1/8"-1 1/4" adapter, which is itself the crown race, stay with the fork, so wouldn't be any more faff to switch than a tapered fork

Singular touring fork? Actually it's not thru axle

Feel like it'll look stupid with a 1 1/8" fork in a tapered frame though. And isn't a tapered fork 1 1/2" at the bottom? Do the 1 1/2" to 1 1/8" adapters stay with the fork too?

I'll have to do some investigating.

Yes, sorry, I meant 1 1/2"

Sounds like a good excuse to get a nice fork made

I reckon you're overthinking... If the surly krampus 110 is the right length, get that and a cane creek crown racce adaptor. If you want to spend £££ get a custom fork made with a tapered steerer (Talbot made one for Bare Necessities on here) and ask for all the mounts.

I had the same questioned and ended up getting extra eyelets added to a salsa cromoto grande fork.

The only OTP option I can see any time soon is when they offer up the new karate monkey fork on its own.

How much did that cost, all told? Have you tried it properly loaded up? I assume it could take a fair bit of weight as I'm sure people ride around on the un-modified fork with tents etc. strapped to the bars.

Edit: interesting reading here, backing up earlier suggestions to just use the adapter: http://surlybikes.com/info_hole/faqs/what_kind_of_headset_do_i_need_for_my_instigator_ice_cream_truck_karate_mon

Got the forks second hand for about half the RRP. And the modification was done by a friend. I'm planning on using anything cages and maybe a surly 8 pack. Wouldn't be worried about loading them up as I'll never be carrying that much stuff really. Heaviest thing will probably be the ltr of water in each cage.

Question, dear monster x people. When riding single track with drops, do you stay on the hoods or in the drops? Any special techniques?

I find the hoods better for handling, but managed to knock them slightly out of place from impact and also got my hands really fatigued quickly. In the drops I struggle to clear tighter turns and feel like my teeth are much more likely to kiss boulders.

My budget project..