I’ve been wanting a bike for more paved / dirt road uses, but something rugged enough to be banged around as I’m wont to do. For a while I was looking at the Salsa Fargo, but now I’m starting to have other thoughts, steering me towards building up something myself. In particular, I’ve been thinking that a black Surly Karate Monkey frame could do quite nicely with an Shimano Alfine hub and Avid BB7 Road disc brakes. With dirt drop bars and a Jtek Engineering Bar-end Shifter, I think this would be quite the machine for random go-anywhere-but-singletrack rides.
Swapping the bars for a more standard mountain bike bar would even turn it into an interesting, fully rigid off-road device if I wanted to do that. Or, I could even consider something between the two like a On-One Mary Bar or Titec H-Bar or J-Bar, as long as the brake levers chosen work right wtih the shorter pull BB7 Road calipers…
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