Was doing a tire change on this surly the other day, and noticed that the wheel was very far out of dish true. At first I thought the wheel was built incorrectly with equal length spokes despite an offset rim. Then I noticed the fork works with the wheel. What’s the point of this? Why not have a normal centered wheel and a symmetrical fork?
by JohnnyGranola
9 Comments
It’s broken. Looks like it was hit by a car or sum
Some Surlys use the same hub spacing front and rear to make it easy to keep or find spares on long trips.
Rear wheel setup with gears, singlespeed freewheel on the front wheel as a bail-out option if you grenade a derailleur.
[deleted]
When the Pugsley was designed “rear” hubs were the widest commonly available. It made sense to use that spacing front and back. The offset allows the widest tire while limited by that (small) hub width.
The rear is offset, too. It’s the only way to fit a full cassette and a 4 inch tire with a 135mm hub. This was before we had 170mm and 197mm options with symmetric setups.
For folks who aren’t familiar with Surley’s offset fork:
https://surlybikes.com/parts/pugsley_fork
As multiple other people have mentioned, it’s designed to fit a rear wheel as the front wheel
Basically its a product of “what was avail at the time.” Surly was at the forefront of fatbikes and some of the necessary bits simply didnt exist.
Definitely bent on the right side