Given that there's no UK fat bike forum I'll ask here.

Cath has a Surly Wednesday which currently is the stock model so has the 27tpi Surly Nates mounted tubeless on 80mm rims. I was doing a bit of internet shopping this morning and asked her if she wanted anything, the answer was "some lighter tyres for the fat bike"!

We are doing the Rovaniemi 150 next Feb so something suitable for that would be ideal.

According to Surly the Wednesday can take a maximum of a 4.6" tyre which is kind of awkward as there aren't that many tyres in the 4.1" to 4.6" range, lots of 4.0" and plenty of 4.8" but ... (actually just ten according to this site https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-g ... ike-tires/) The two that spring to mind given that I run 45Nrth tyres are the Flowbeist and Dunderbeist. They are very winter specific though so they'd be somewhat overkill for most of the time. Sticking with 45Nrth there's the Husker Dus, I've got a somewhat worn set of these for my bike, only 4.0" but seem decent if there's no snow (or mud) to contend with - looking at 45Nrth's site it seems that new they are meant as a snow tyre. The Vanhelgas (which I also have) are pretty similar to the Nates if slightly bigger (actually they seem a lot more voluminous) but like the *beists a bit overkill if there's no snow, they also sound like an approaching Panzer division when riding on tarmac .

Just for comparison, the Nates are roughly 400g heavier each than either of my tyres.

Is there anything else we should be looking at?

whitestone wrote: there's the Husker Dus, I've got a somewhat worn set of these for my bike, only 4.0" but seem decent if there's no snow (or mud) to contend with - looking at 45Nrth's site it seems that new they are meant as a snow tyre. ?

There's snow and there's snow. Remember the original Surly fatbike tyres?? The Endomorph was consider a snow tyre. Sometimes, it's more important to float over soft terrain than look for grip by biting into it and thereby causing additional drag. I had the first set of HuDus in the UK and everyone was amazed at how gnarly they were compared with the Endomorph and the Larry

Remember the original Surly fatbike tyres??

I'm not that old Colin

I should have said, the Rovaniemi is a mixture of rivers, lakes and roughly groomed (by snowmobiles) tracks. That's in a good year. If conditions are bad then it's a walk with your bike.

I've only used the Husker Dus in summer, when things got sloppy I got very good at sideways dismounts! I then moved on to the Vanhelgas which just happen to have stayed on the bike for 18 months now.

Edit: I should say that I can't justify having another set of fat bike tyres - I'd probably get the Flow and Dunder beists which would mean over £700 of tyres

For snow I'd go Bud and Lou, but not sure if they are that narrow

Bud and Lou ran at about 112 mm on my internally 80 mm rim with tubes at round about 0.5 bar.

For the snow I mostly ride at home (CH) it was the best tyre I ever used or test rode. I'm on Snowshoe XL now, but just because they also come with studs and because I hurt myself crashing in ice 1-2 a winter.

Kenda Juggernaut has some lightweight models and does quite okay on snow.
Huge weight saving comes from going tubeless thought. Also, with a decent setup you can ride basically ambient pressure and float on quite amazing snow conditions.

Also, with a not too aggressive tread you can spin out of soft snow patches, which is harder to do with a more aggressive tyre, it spins out later, but it takes more power to get rolling once you get stuck. Might not come handy on a long ride.

Well worth giving a good pondering. Tyres and pressure make the difference of riding or pushing in/on snow.

What about a higher tpi set of Nates? (If she likes the tread*)


* slightly biased fan of Nates here.

A bit of searching and I came across one of Coastrider's blog posts about fitting 5" Jumbo Jims to the Wednesday. To say it's a bit of a hack is an understatement but full marks for inventiveness Basically he added two spacers on the drive side of the BB and then took the next to smallest cog off the cassette (XT so it's separate) and used it as a spacer on the freehub. All still very tight though and he admits it might not work in muddy conditions. To keep the effective chainstay short he didn't slide the axle all the way back in the dropout slot so there's possibly a bit of leeway there.

She's almost certainly going to want to keep the bike with a 2x drivetrain so I think 4.6" or "narrow" 4.8" will be the widest tyres to look at. At the moment, "lighter tyres" is all I've got to go on, I don't know if she wants them for winter or more general usage.

Gian - she's currently tubeless so we'll stay with that. I've seen poor reviews/comments about the Juggernaut Sport, basically as a result of aim to go as light as possible the sidewalls are too thin. The Pro model seems a bit better though. Like you say, worth giving it some thought, I spent about two months looking at reviews and various forums before settling on the Vanhelgas.

I’ve just taken a BFL off mine and replaced it with a 4.4” Jumbo Jim. The BFL is good for snow, but I found it worked best fitted reversed as the triangular pattern helps it dig in for pedalling. It’s a very supple tyre as well, aside from the tread pattern being unsuitable for my use I really liked it.

The 4.4” Jumbo Jim is excellent though as an all rounder. I’ve got a 4.8” of the same up front - sadly it sizes quite big otherwise I’d have suggested that.

whitestone wrote:Gian - she's currently tubeless so we'll stay with that. I've seen poor reviews/comments about the Juggernaut Sport, basically as a result of aim to go as light as possible the sidewalls are too thin. The Pro model seems a bit better though.

Darn, I was hoping she'd still be in for a treat going tubeless...

If the chain rubs, have you thought about investing in 1x11/1x12, potentially with a flipped direct mount chainring?

Exactly, it's the Pro version to look at when it comes to the Juggernauts.

whitestone wrote:I spent about two months looking at reviews and various forums before settling on the Vanhelgas.

Yeah, the Vanhelga's seem really good.
I rode a bit during the snow bike festival with the late and very likeable Mario Peters who had his (test) bike tyre setup for the races changed from I don't know what to Vanhelga's and he raved about them.
Here are some of his words (in German):
https://www.mtb-news.de/news/2017/03/08 ... paign=news

Bud and lou defo won't fit. I saw Bruces Wednesday with the '4.8' (actually about 4.5") JJ's and its a bit tight..... 4" JJs maybe worth considering as they are super light and work well on groomed snow. They do loose out on choppy / soft stuff compared to nates however even if you run them at 1psi.

I've never tried 45nrth tires so can't comment but the new Surly Edna looks like the one - not as gnarly as a nate but wider and lighter so should be just the job

I had a JJ on the back. They seemed like great tyres but after one longish ride at low pressure in the snow the casing cracked all around the tyre. I sent it back and got my money back. I hope it was a one off!

Hmm. I'd not looked at the Edna, seems to get good reviews and strikes a nice balance between weight, float, grip and peculiar names

htrider wrote:Bud and lou defo won't fit. I saw Bruces Wednesday with the '4.8' (actually about 4.5") JJ's and its a bit tight..... 4" JJs maybe worth considering as they are super light and work well on groomed snow. They do loose out on choppy / soft stuff compared to nates however even if you run them at 1psi.

I've never tried 45nrth tires so can't comment but the new Surly Edna looks like the one - not as gnarly as a nate but wider and lighter so should be just the job

Phil - there’s a 4.4” JJ now as well.

AlasdairMc wrote:

htrider wrote:Bud and lou defo won't fit. I saw Bruces Wednesday with the '4.8' (actually about 4.5") JJ's and its a bit tight..... 4" JJs maybe worth considering as they are super light and work well on groomed snow. They do loose out on choppy / soft stuff compared to nates however even if you run them at 1psi.

I've never tried 45nrth tires so can't comment but the new Surly Edna looks like the one - not as gnarly as a nate but wider and lighter so should be just the job

Phil - there’s a 4.4” JJ now as well.

Missed that one - good move given that pretty much everyone is running 1x on fat bikes these days.
Bob a 4.4 JJ will see Cath right!

A bit more info - they are for winter so a bit of flotation and some grip might be in order

Looks like either Surly Ednas 4.3" or 4.4" JJs. The JJs are pretty cheap at the moment - £57, the Ednas are £75.

I got my JJ from r2-bike. At the moment they’re £49 plus shipping for the Pacestar Liteskin version, although I’ve gone for the Snakeskin version (£55) for durability. I can’t remember how much shipping was but not a huge amount

Friend rode JJ in snow and wasn't happy at all. He then changed to Juggernauts and thought it was much of an improvement...

I used my JJ's in the snow last year before I tried the maxxis mammoths. They were surprisingly good and being very supple worked really well at ultra low pressures. As noted above they did struggle in wet snow and glop which is where bud n lou really score but were fine in dry snow and even dealt with some early season windslab...

I used the lightskins on the highland trail and whilst they looked a bit threadbare by the end, they did survive despite much rock bashing. That said the snakeskins are probably the better bet for all round riding.

I found the 4.0 JJ's were great in the snow.

An update.

The tyres arrived a couple of weeks ago but I wasn't sure how the existing tyres had been set up and also thought that a little bling was in order.

The patient: A Surly Wednesday fat bike. Original weight: 16.88kg. The front wheel weighed 3.53kg while the rear weighed 4kg exactly (but had virtually no sealant). Their diameter was 740mm



The treatment: replace the 27TPI Surly Nates with 60TPI Surly Edna tyres.

The Nates are wired bead which are supposed to be hard to remove but I managed the front wheel using just my fingers. One bead on the rear needed a little "persuasion" with my boot. I removed all the Gorilla and tape from the rim which took a few minutes then properly cleaned everything up which took a lot longer. The bike frame is blue so I fitted blue Surly rim strips for a bit of bling with the colour showing through the rabbit holes. Then a couple of wraps of 48mm wide Gorilla Tape, two needed as there isn't any GT wide enough for the rims. Fit the valve. On with the tyre pulling the beads as close to the rims as possible then inflate - the tyres inflated with just the track pump, no need for Airshot or similar. Once the tyre has seated add sealant and reinflate to desired pressure.

Nate on the left, Edna on the right


Repeat with the rear wheel. Which took a little longer - it turned out the beads were catching on the nipple nuts so a little persuasion was called for. The Wednesday has slotted dropouts so you can adjust the effective chainstay length but this feature also allows you to fit wider tyres. An adjustment of the brake calliper to suite the new axle location and it was done. There's very little clearance, a couple of mm, when in the small ring and big cog so I'd say that with a 2x drivetrain the Ednas are probably close to the maximum width tyre you can fit. At 10psi the carcase is 102mm wide and the tread 107mm wide. The new tyres are about 10mm larger diameter than the Nates.

The result: New weight of 15.87kg so just over 1kg weight loss but it's in the right place.





When compared with my Puffin I think the weight is now very reasonable - the bike feels noticeably lighter to move around. The Vanhelgas on the Puffin are 100g lighter per tyre and the carbon forks would save 700g over the Surly steel offering. However that lot would cost around £450 over and above the £160 that the Edna tyres and the rim tapes have cost.

Looks good Bob. Next summer switch the treads to JJ's and drop another 500gs, 1x to drop another 300gs, and a few more bling bits to probs drop another 100 and it will be a super lightweight (For info my ICT comes in at 15kg with liteskin JJ's)

htrider wrote:Looks good Bob. Next summer switch the treads to JJ's and drop another 500gs, 1x to drop another 300gs, and a few more bling bits to probs drop another 100 and it will be a super lightweight (For info my ICT comes in at 15kg with liteskin JJ's)

We've enough tyres and wheels (fat and otherwise) around the house as it is! Not sure how much she's done on the Nates, probably less than 1000km, the tread is hardly worn. She's got 1x on the Stooge but 2x is probably better for her on this, might be different now it's a bit sprightlier

Having a shed entirely filled with part worn fat bike tyres is a sign of the true die hard fatbiker (or something - am I just trying to justify a shed full of part worn fat bike tyres??)
1x works well with a 26t ring. It spins an 11t out at about 18mph which is as fast as you ever need to go on a fat bike

htrider wrote:Having a shed entirely filled with part worn fat bike tyres is a sign of the true die hard fatbiker (or something - am I just trying to justify a shed full of part worn fat bike tyres??)
1x works well with a 26t ring. It spins an 11t out at about 18mph which is as fast as you ever need to go on a fat bike

1x would need new cranks (the SRAM X5 is 2x only), new derailleur since the X5 is max 36T, new cassette, new chain. RaceFace AEffect crank is 300g lighter than the X5 then you'd lose roughly 300g with the loss of the front shifter and derailleur. There'd be a slight increase in weight with a larger range cassette, call it 50g. That'd be somewhere in the region of £250 for 550g savings That's without even considering going to 11spd or XD drivel. I think letting the current drivetrain wear out first might be in order.

Edit: knowing SRAM's predilection for odd BB standards, it's likely to need a new one of those as well