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- Sep 17, 2013
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I got the Quigley. Yesterday I took it for a 6 mile single track shake down cruise. The front wheel is so massive it has a mind of its own, like a gyroscope. You can't ride no hands very easily. It is a bouncy bike with the full suspension and fat tires. With all the rear suspension parts and bushings and the massive size of the tires it is easy to take it by the seat and shake it side to side. The whole bike is wobbly when you shake it, but I didn't notice any of this riding it. I had to really watch it on the side of the gorge I was riding on as it doesn't track as easily as my 29er. On the straighter downhill sections I could run over stuff and on the flats I could run over rocks etc. I kept bouncing off my pedals and had to push up a short steep section as I lost my pedal. However on a bumpy downhill section where my friend has a problem with accumulative bouncing (getting worse and worse/more amplified with each bump) on his non suspension fat bike, I went down without any of that as the suspension took care of that. I tried the beginning of one of the black diamond single tracks and did no better on the fat bike than I can do with my 29er. The brakes are very adequate. The brake lever position needs to be adjusted as I had problems with my Swix split finger half mitts, I had trouble shifting with the small levers. Most people here ride in the winter with the half glove half mitten and I think it would be hard to shift this bike with them in the winter, but you mostly use the bottom 3 gears anyway with a snow bike. Yesterday only 3 short sections still had ice and snow on them and I was able to ride right over that and the mud was not too bad. Today was a different ride, 10 miles and it goes on the north side of a big bluff and that had about a half mile of intermittent walking because of the snow. It was too mushy to ride on with fat tires. It is in the high 30s but in the morning it will be frozen and much more ridable. I adjusted the grips and they are much better. It feels like this bike has weird geometry, like a Raleigh MTN bike I had in the 80s. The frame is very high. I can clear the top tube at the seat for a stand over height but the top tube has such an angle that you end out cracking yourself about in half at a tender spot. They only come in 17 and 19 inch sizes. I would guess that they would fit better at the upper end of the recommended height (depending on your leg length). The riding position of my 17 inch fits me perfectly right out of the box. On the flats the brakes work great but on steep downhills with a right angle turn at the bottom you have to be careful as I kept lifting the rear wheel (I can get use to this but you have to be careful not to go over on your head). I got stuck in mud about 3 inches deep, it just spun. I also went sideways in the mud, fat tires roll over stuff, but still get stuck and slide around. I was able to ride through quite a bit of soft snow, about a third of the snow cover was ridable and about a half mile wasn't (there were short places between the snow that were bare and ridable so it was mount and dismount for about 3 miles). There were also 5 trees that blew down over the trail this winter that caused me to dismount. I used different shoes today and adjusted the seat so my arches were centered on the platform pedals and only lost the pedal once. I have not ridden it enough to form any opinion good or bad. Most people I talk to are really enthused about fat bikes, love them. I am pretty ambivalent after riding a borrowed one this winter on the snow bike tails. I am not that impressed with fat bikes in general, so far. I plan to use it a lot more before I decide if it's for me. It did work great, smooth shifting, powerful braking, rolling over rocks, roots and packed snow, and smoothing out a very bumpy fast downhill section. The downside is the weight, I used lower gears and went slower up the hills. I like to scream up hills and fly over the whoop de dos on the short down section, but with a fat bike it is a little different set of skills and experience. There was no noticeable side to side wobble. The gyroscopic action of the front wheel got to be less and less of a problem the more I rode it and got used to it, by the end of the ride it was hardly noticeable. It was very well packed and arrived without a scratch.
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