Hello fellow fatbikers!
I’ve got a Farley 5, and after hopping back on it for the snow riding season I’m reminded of how goofy the stock cockpit feels compared to my more modern trail bike.
I don’t want to ruin what makes the geo work, but I do want a shorter stem and a bit more sweep. For those running more modern components on a fatbike wort snow geo was it all gravy? Screw any of the dynamics up?
It currently has an 80mm stem, 750mm wide bar with 15mm rise.
TL; DR – what stem and bar did you guys swap your Farley to, and did you regret it?
by GatsAndThings
2 Comments
Funny enough I *just* dialed in my cockpit after a lot of faffing on my fat bike. I find that there’s really a fine balance between getting your comfortable “just riding along in the snow” feeling and the “put a lot of weight on the front wheel to prevent yourself from washing out” attack position.
In the summer I’ve had great luck with a 40mm stem and Stooge Moto bars, which have 38mm of rise and (crucially) 17º of back sweep. 17º is the minimum of back sweep I want, even on my all mountain full suspension bike. I also ran my saddle a little further back on the rails for a more comfortable seated position when crushing the miles out on sandy forest roads. But when the snow hit I slammed my saddle all the way forward and put a 50mm stem on, which helped a lot in terms of attack position and weighting the front wheel.
That being said, I wanted to get a little more back sweep (since I love Jones bars so much on my Monstercross bike). So to split the difference I went for Steve Potts Siskiyou bars, which have 0mm rise and 30º back sweep. They’re basically like toned down Jones bars. To get the bar height where I wanted it to be I needed a slammed +35º 90mm stem. I find it’s giving me the front wheel traction I want when riding the loose twisty stuff while still being able to just sit back and cruise on the non-technical stuff.
If you don’t feel like buying 100 stems to figure out what works, I really recommend [this stem comparison tool here.](http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/stem.php) For example, it shows that if I wanted to add a little more reach to what I am currently running (slammed +35º 90mm stem), my best bet would be to run a +17º 80mm stem with that stack of spacers underneath it. Trigonometry… for us nerds.
https://preview.redd.it/unxmt0wwb87g1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27576e78f8121e02af3bc492a273386e70daef8a
Is the short (30mm) on my kona Wo why front wheel feels loose?