# Advice Needed for a "Multi-Tool" Adventure Bike



## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

I've spent the last few weeks soaking up this forum and other bikepacking websites and I can't get enough. I love backpacking, I love mountain biking, and I can't believe I haven't mixed the two yet. I really admire all you folks with your awesome stories and adventures on these bikes.

I could use some advice, but I'll start with my situation. I'm nearly 40 years old and done a few 100 miler endurance mountain biking races, nothing serious, just an age grouper having fun and make it to the finish. I live in Utah and want to get into bikepacking, I'll take my first bikepacking this Spring, a 100 miler on the White Rim trail. My plan is to split it into two days, ride counter-clockwise starting down the Shafer road and riding the 64ish miles to the Potato Bottom campground. We'll spend the night there and bike the rest of the 100 miles out. 

My regular mountain bike is a full-suspension 29er XC carbon race bike, and I could definitely bike-pack with it but I'm considering a new bike just for kicks. I'm looking at titanium 29er hard-tails like the Lynskey Ridgeline. I just want something simple and pretty hard to fail, yet also light. A hardtail 29er would also have lots of frame space for bags. I like the idea of putting a rigid fork on for lighter duty trips that are mainly gravel roads, and a 100 or 120mm suspension fork for trips that are predominantly single track. A hardtail with a rigid fork would also make a great commuter bike, cyclocross bike for hackers like me, or even racing the Crusher in the Tushar, a gravel race in Utah that is on my bucket list. Basically I want a jack-of-all-trades, multi-tool type of adventure bike. A ti hardtail seems to check these boxes. 

I first imagined this bike having somewhat narrower tires given that it would deal with its share of pavement and gravel. But then I started reading all these articles and blogs about big-tired adventure bikes and it has me scratching my head. I always thought fat bikes were a snow, mud, sand thing, but I am new to the plus sized wheels adventure bikepacking idea; it is a curiosity. It seems like the 3 inch tires would be really slow on the pavement and gravel, but would be great for gnarly, muddy, snowy sections of single track. There there are guys running fat tires with a rigid fork, it seems counter-intuitive to trade frame weight (going from a heavier suspension fork to a lighter rigid fork) for rotational weight of fatter tires, but it looks like fun. The Lynskey Ridgeline can take up to a 2.5" tire in the rear, so I couldn't go bigger than that, at least in the back. That will do I think. 

But looking at wheels/tires for this kind of bike, I really don’t know if I’ll need a rim width that could handle up to a 2.5" tire and maybe a little bigger for the front. Being an XC guy, I’ve never ridden tires this fat, so I don’t know how I’ll like it. It does look like fun, but maybe kind of heavy and slow. But maybe a bike laden with a few days worth of gear needs some extra cushion underneath, no matter what the surface.

I also think I’ll want to be able to put skinnier tires on it for lighter duty rides, or gravel rides with no gear. 

So my first question is, do you like the wider tires like 2.5” and maybe more and what areas are they good for? Are you a fan or a critic and why?

Next, I’m likely to need two sets of wheels if I want to go from for example, a 2.1” Thunder Burt all the way up to a 2.6” Nobby Nic… Or is there one rim width, say a 25-26mm, that might get close? A 25mm internal rim width would probably work well for a range of 2.1” to 2.4” tires. Anyone ride 2.1” tires on wider rims (say 26mm?)

I’m sure I’ll have more newbie questions but these are my initial questions, thanks for any advice!


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## life behind bars (May 24, 2014)

Motobecane Boost Ti frame set. Curiak wheel set.


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## bsieb (Aug 23, 2003)

I think you should go with 30-35mm rim to start, you won't miss the skinnies much, is my bet. The big 29 wheels REally roll.


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

Bsieb, I was thinking the same thing, a 30mm internal width wheel might be just right to run the mid-size tires, like a Continental X-King 2.4 in the back and a Schwalbe Nobby Nic 2.6 up front. There isn’t a huge selection of 29er tires that are wide and fast, all the wider tires are for enduro it seems.

I’ve also started looking at the Sir 9, those built in frame bag attachment points are pretty slick. But I worry that the steel frame might weigh a lot more than titanium. Anyone know what a Sir 9 frame weighs (the newer version with updated geometry)?


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## bsieb (Aug 23, 2003)

^Weight becomes less of an issue as you begin to hang weight from the frame. Strength and durability, as well as functionality, are more important. Skinny tubes, which leave more room for gear attachment, become more attractive, as a rule..

edit: If you are building wheels, you might check out internally geared hubs (IGH). I am running an Alfine 8 speed, tough as shimano, and after riding singlespeed for years, 8 feels totally plush. The advantages of the ss drivetrain combined with the IGH are huge for back country bushwacking and messy going.


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## leeboh (Aug 5, 2011)

2.1 to 2.5 is like 1/2 an inch? Weight? Not much more. Weight is an issue when you have 20-30 lbs ( or so) of gear? Look at some plus 29er hardtails and do some demos. think about a 30 -35 mm inner width rim to run 2.3 to 2.8 tires. And get a frame to run 3.0 tires. You can always go smaller for wheels and tires. For my bikepacking, it is always a compromise for tires. Running balballoni 3.0 front and planning on putting a rekon 29 x 2.6 in the back of my Karate Monkey. Skinny slicks will leave you walking on the loose and rough stuff off road. Go with some bigger volume, less tread as a compromise do all tire. Air up for pave, less for dirt. Set aside your fast and light thoughts. Slicks? Surly and Maxxis both make 29x2.5 sort of slicks. lots of options coming out in the spring for big and fast rolling for say the 2.6- 2.8 29ers.


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## Rob_E (Nov 22, 2010)

The Boz said:


> Next, I'm likely to need two sets of wheels if I want to go from for example, a 2.1" Thunder Burt all the way up to a 2.6" Nobby Nic&#8230; Or is there one rim width, say a 25-26mm, that might get close? A 25mm internal rim width would probably work well for a range of 2.1" to 2.4" tires. Anyone ride 2.1" tires on wider rims (say 26mm?)


I second the idea for looking for rims in the 30s for that kind of range. I run my 2.15" tires on 25-29 internal width rims, and they feel just fine, but when I wanted to run my 2.5" ETs, I built up a 40mm rim. Somewhere in the 30s could probably handle both rims easily, but I like the feel of the tires on the rims they are on. And it's easier to swap out wheels than it is rims. So 30s if you really want one wheelset, but I like having two.

I feel like wider tires allows for lower pressure which allows the tire to conform to the ground, so better grip + smoother rolling. However I'm not really a mountain biker, so I haven't put this to any real test in a really rough, off-road environment. I'm mostly just someone who doesn't mind hitting the dirt if it's the shortest rout to where I'm headed. However any time I'm off road, I prefer the wider tire. The ETs have more buzz on pavement, due to the tread, so I wouldn't take them on a pavement-only ride, but any time there's a significant amount of off-road, of any sort, I'll take them. My only issue is that wider tires get tricky if I have to transport the bike: They don't fit in the bus rack, they exceed Amtrak's tire limits for carry-on service, and I can't fit them in the S&S case with the rest of my bike. Otherwise I'd put up with the pavement buzzing in favor of having the ETs off road. That said, there's a tread difference between my mostly-smooth Almotions and my slightly knobby ETs, so that could also account for the difference. But I will say that I had an opportunity last year to ride 150 miles of rail trail once with the Almotions and again with the ETs. Carrying less weight on the ET run, too, so it's not an entirely fair comparison, but still I enjoyed the performance of the ETs more, even though both tires were really overkill for the relatively smooth rail-trail. Many people were riding much narrower tires just fine, but that didn't make me want to trade in my 2.5" tires.


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## LyNx (Oct 26, 2004)

I would say that a nice, steel or Ti rigid PLUS bike is the ideal bike packing setup. Worrying about saving weight and having a weight weenie build to save a couple pounds, only to load it up with 40lbs, makes no sense and as said, reliability is the key. Definitely get rims that are 35-40mm internal and hubs that are reliable.

If you're interested and not sure, pick up a new Surly Karate Monkey complete or Kona UnitX complete and give it a go, once you've had at it a while and figured out if you really like it and what you want/need, then look to get your Chi-Chi Ti bike built, don't buy a production Ti bike that cannot fit anything bigger than a 2.5" tyre, not for bike packing. Just transferred all the parts from my '08 Monkey to a '18 Unit and super happy with it.


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

Great advice guys. 

LyNx, you may be right-on that a plus bike is the optimal bikepacking setup. This bike, however, is a more jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, so there will be some compromises. I'm looking at like-new but used frames for now so it ends up being a lot less than retail. I think a set of 30-35mm ID wheels with a 2.6" Nobby Nic up front, and maybe the 2.6 Nic would fit okay on the rear too, or find something in 2.5" for the rear. My pack is 25 lbs for a 5 day backpacking trip, so I'm hoping to be packing light on the bike as well, I'll have to carry some bike tools but I think I can get by with 25 lbs of gear for most of my trips, which will be predominantly 2-3 days. 

For you folks that do use suspension forks for bikepacking, do you run 100mm or 120mm of travel? What size stanchions?


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## LyNx (Oct 26, 2004)

Well, to be quite honest, I just got my Kona Unit frameset and transferred all the parts that fit to it from my 10 year old Monkey and with the updated geo and increased reach and ability to run a 50mm stem, I don't find any compromises in it, it works really well for everything.

I take it you take a water filtration system with you on those trips, as no way that could include enough water for that length of time. Even minus water I'm not sure how you can only be taking so little weight wise, but then again, you don't need to take tools and spares "in case" like if you're on a bike. My standard riding pack with 2-3 litres of water is over 15lbs on a light day, make it a long day and that easily approaches 20lbs.



The Boz said:


> *LyNx, you may be right-on that a plus bike is the optimal bikepacking setup. This bike, however, is a more jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, so there will be some compromises. *I'm looking at like-new but used frames for now so it ends up being a lot less than retail. I think a set of 30-35mm ID wheels with a 2.6" Nobby Nic up front, and maybe the 2.6 Nic would fit okay on the rear too, or find something in 2.5" for the rear. My pack is 25 lbs for a 5 day backpacking trip, so I'm hoping to be packing light on the bike as well, I'll have to carry some bike tools but I think I can get by with 25 lbs of gear for most of my trips, which will be predominantly 2-3 days.
> 
> For you folks that do use suspension forks for bikepacking, do you run 100mm or 120mm of travel? What size stanchions?


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## HEMIjer (Jul 17, 2008)

The Boz said:


> Great advice guys.
> 
> LyNx, you may be right-on that a plus bike is the optimal bikepacking setup. This bike, however, is a more jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, so there will be some compromises. I'm looking at like-new but used frames for now so it ends up being a lot less than retail. I think a set of 30-35mm ID wheels with a 2.6" Nobby Nic up front, and maybe the 2.6 Nic would fit okay on the rear too, or find something in 2.5" for the rear. My pack is 25 lbs for a 5 day backpacking trip, so I'm hoping to be packing light on the bike as well, I'll have to carry some bike tools but I think I can get by with 25 lbs of gear for most of my trips, which will be predominantly 2-3 days.
> 
> For you folks that do use suspension forks for bikepacking, do you run 100mm or 120mm of travel? What size stanchions?


Just picked up a 120mm reba for bikepacking not much experience but from what I can gather it would fine. Would have prefered to take the Fox 34 Factory of Endurance racing bike but wanted something dedicated at a reasonable price. I have done some 6 hour rides with it and it is so far so good including some rocky singletrack with a packed up medium size sweetroll.


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

I should have clarified, for foot-hiking I carry a 25 lb pack, but that doesn't include water, and this is for summer trips in Uinta mountains where there is water every mile, so I don't have to carry much at all. If I bring my fly rod it is a bit more, but on foot I don't need bike repair tools, spare tire, tubes, etc.

The Kona Unit looks like a great ride (though I'd prefer the non-masochistic geared version!). So many choices in the 27.5+ 3" tire category, both in bikes and tires. In the "wide trail" 29 category I'm looking at, not so much. I could go 27.5, the wheel diameter on a 3" is close to an XC 29er. But I'm 6 foot 3 and ride an XL with a really tall seat post (I would make a standard tire 27.5" bike look like most folk's old 26" bike, and my old 26" bike was like riding a clown bike, but the kind where the clown is on a super tall bike with small wheels), and plus I just like the way the big 29er wheels look and roll.

Here is an interesting article that talks about the pros and cons of 29er mid-sized or "wide trail" tires and bikes:

Teravail Cumberland Review, Is 2.6 the new 3.0? - BIKEPACKING.com

There aren't a lot of these bikes, but one is the Salsa Timberjack. Made in aluminum but sold only as a complete, or as a frameset $2,300 titanium version. This bike takes up to a 2.6" tire (or a 27.5+) but rider reports say it works on most of the 2.8" tires out there, which makes it a pretty versatile beast. I like the internal cable routing for the rear brake, shifter, and even a dropper post.

https://salsacycles.com/bikes/timberjack/2017_timberjack_ti_frame

Another "wide trail" contender is the Why Cycles' Wayward, which takes up to a 2.8" tire or bigger on a 27.5. It is also titanium and similarly priced to the Salsa.

Wayward - Why Cycles


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## LyNx (Oct 26, 2004)

I'm 6'2.25" tall and have a 35.25" inseam, so I have an idea on bike fit and looks for tall riders and there's nothing "weird" looking about the Unit or any of the other 650B+ bikes. I run mine rigid right now and so the fork has loads of room for a 29+ and I run it to increase the rollover where it's really needed and to slack it out a bit more.

Only had it since last Friday, but so far, only thing a bit "negative" for me is the stack height, bit strange needing 35mm of spacers under the stem with a 15* rise bar and already running an external lower cup and 1.5"+ taller tyre.Other than that, really digging it. If you get just the Unit frame, it comes with the geared drop outs or if you want a complete, get the UnitX, comes geared.


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

Sweet ride!!! Looks like a fun, go-anywhere, ride-anything machine!


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## richwolf (Dec 8, 2004)

My suggestion?? Get the Trek 1120 and be done with it! I have a standard Stache and use it for everything from trail riding to bikepacking. If it were available when I got mine I might have chosen that instead. Just add a suspension fork so you can choose between rigid and hardtail. Plus you being a big guy a 29 plus bike would work well for you.


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## LyNx (Oct 26, 2004)

So far, it really does seem to be, will find out for sure how it is on the steep, techy stuff this weekend 


The Boz said:


> Sweet ride!!! Looks like a fun, go-anywhere, ride-anything machine!


That's a sweet looking bike, did not know Trek did that, definitely looks like a pretty ideal bike packing bike that can handle some regular trail ripping duties. One small caveat which may not make it so consumer friendly for N.America....*
"Weight limit -This bike has a maximum total weight limit (combined weight of bicycle, rider, and cargo) of 300 pounds (136 kg)."* 


richwolf said:


> My suggestion?? Get the Trek 1120 and be done with it! I have a standard Stache and use it for everything from trail riding to bikepacking. If it were available when I got mine I might have chosen that instead. Just add a suspension fork so you can choose between rigid and hardtail. Plus you being a big guy a 29 plus bike would work well for you.


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## Co-opski (Oct 24, 2013)

The Boz said:


> Great advice guys.
> 
> LyNx, you may be right-on that a plus bike is the optimal bikepacking setup. This bike, however, is a more jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, so there will be some compromises. I'm looking at like-new but used frames for now so it ends up being a lot less than retail. I think a set of 30-35mm ID wheels with a 2.6" Nobby Nic up front, and maybe the 2.6 Nic would fit okay on the rear too, or find something in 2.5" for the rear. My pack is 25 lbs for a 5 day backpacking trip, so I'm hoping to be packing light on the bike as well, I'll have to carry some bike tools but I think I can get by with 25 lbs of gear for most of my trips, which will be predominantly 2-3 days.
> 
> For you folks that do use suspension forks for bikepacking, do you run 100mm or 120mm of travel? What size stanchions?


For me a jack of all trades bike is a fat bike with a 2nd set of plus wheels 29+ or b+.
But for you I would get + bike and a set of skinny wheels if you want to monstercross, gravel grind or commute. 
I get by with 80mm Mastodon and 60mm Lauf.

My build Fatback 170 lauf DT swiss br710 82mm dynamo wheels 26x4.6 studs (winter), 44mm Velocity Dually 26x4.0 Jumbo Jim (beach summer), 27.5 Velocity Dually 44mm 27.5 x2.8 Nobby Nic dynamo (bikepacking summer).


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

Well here she is:









































































The frame ended up fitting a 2.6" Rekon in the back just fine on a 34mm inner rim. The front tire is a 2.8" Terrene McFly. Wheels are from XMcarbonspeed, asymmetric laced up to I9 hubs by a local wheel builder. Race Face Next SL cranks, SRAM Eagle XO 12 speed (with GX shifter), Niner fork, Guide RSC brakes, Lynskey titanium seat post round out the build. Just over 22 lbs. I need to play around with the cockpit spacers and flip the stem.

The bike rides great and is a lot of fun. The head angle on the Lynskey isn't super slack and I like that, the front wheel stays planted on the climbs but it descends with plenty of confidence. There is something fun about going fully rigid after years of riding full squish bikes, it takes me back to my youth where the bike only does what you want it to do, nothing else. I'll put a suspension fork on it for singletrack heavy routes. The semi-plus tire width of this bike I think will work well for my needs. I'm not planning any routes that are really sandy, and the big 29" wheels roll over anything. The fatter tires definitely feel slower than my 2.35" XC racing tires and i26mm wheels, but the traction is better. They seem to float in the loose gravel instead of spinning out. Next up I'll be getting some frame bags.

Happy Trails


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## richwolf (Dec 8, 2004)

I am wondering why you went with such a small frame?? Looks like you could size up one or two sizes.


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

It is an XL...


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## bsieb (Aug 23, 2003)

^ Awesome! Get RP to make you a custom frame bag, great frame real estate!


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## str8edgMTBMXer (Apr 15, 2015)

that is a sweet machine!!!


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