NAHBS 2015 gallery: The best mountain and fat bikes from Louisville
NAHBS 2015 gallery: The best mountain and fat bikes from Louisville
Awesome machines from Eriksen, Black Cat, Sycip, Fat City Cycles, and more
Fat City Cycles is back! Chris Chance has resurrected the iconic mountain bike brand with two new Yo Eddy hardtails, both modern interpretations of the classic original
Fat City Cycles is back! Chris Chance has resurrected the iconic mountain bike brand with two new Yo Eddy hardtails, both modern interpretations of the classic original - James Huang / Immediate Media
Nuff said - James Huang / Immediate Media
Scalloped chainstays create a little extra clearance for the tire and chainring on the new Fat City Cycles Yo Eddy - James Huang / Immediate Media
Cables are routed externally on the Fat City Cycles Yo Eddy with the exception of the dropper post line - James Huang / Immediate Media
Paragon dropouts and disc mounts are featured out back - James Huang / Immediate Media
Fat City Cycles will offer optional stainless steel seat tubes to fend off corrosion - James Huang / Immediate Media
Just like it was back in the day, the entire Fat City Cycles Yo Eddy frame (aside from the seat tube and head tube) is fully sealed from the elements - even including blind-bottom water bottle mounts - James Huang / Immediate Media
Fat City Cycles will use threaded bottom bracket shells on its resurrected Yo Eddy frames - James Huang / Immediate Media
Colorado builder Oddity Cycles brought to NAHBS this curvaceous steel fat bike - James Huang / Immediate Media
There's nary a straight tube to be found here - James Huang / Immediate Media
Oddity Cycles uses a rather crude - but effective - telescoping chainstay design to tension the singlespeed drivetrain - James Huang / Immediate Media
Peacock Groove's steel fat bike arrived at NAHBS with a fantastic paint job, a Rohloff internally geared rear hub, and featherweight HED carbon rims - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moots brought this experimental 29er hardtail, complete with a wider Boost 148 rear end for better tire and drivetrain clearance - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moots is still playing with the cable routing on this one - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moots is now doing custom media blasted logos in-house - James Huang / Immediate Media
Black Sheep's bikes never fail to impress at NAHBS - James Huang / Immediate Media
Awesome - James Huang / Immediate Media
Our guess is that just as much - or possibly more - work went into building this custom titanium rear rack as a typical frame - James Huang / Immediate Media
Black Sheep consistently has some of the best head tube badges in the business - James Huang / Immediate Media
Dean bolstered NAHBS' Colorado contingent even further with this titanium 29er hardtail - James Huang / Immediate Media
Dean is now welding these titanium seatposts in-house using premade heads - James Huang / Immediate Media
This Black Cat steel hardtail arguably stole the show, at least in the mountain bike category - James Huang / Immediate Media
Black Cat is just about as well known for its dropout designs as its beautiful frames - James Huang / Immediate Media
Check out the sleek brazed-on reinforcement for the down tube on this Black Cat - James Huang / Immediate Media
We'd imagine that the radically curved seatstays on this Black Cat might make for a slower wheel change but boy, do they look cool - James Huang / Immediate Media
This Black Cat custom stem is utterly stunning - James Huang / Immediate Media
Sycip's machines seamlessly blend art and function - James Huang / Immediate Media
Sycip's trademark seatstay caps - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moonmen is a new builder out of Colorado, focusing around fat bikes and plus bikes - James Huang / Immediate Media
The machined chainstay yoke halves provide a lot of extra clearance as compared to what would otherwise be possible with a tube. Note the slick adjustable chainstay, too, to tension singlespeed and IGH drivetrains - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moonmen's double top tube treatment is exceptionally slick - James Huang / Immediate Media
Instead of using telescoping chainstay sections and clamps or set screws to lock to adjustment in place, Moonmen is using a neat double-threaded adjuster. It's a more elegant solution for sure - James Huang / Immediate Media
Short bits of titanium tube reinforce the dropout area on this Moonmen hardtail - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moonmen's frames use a variety of intricately machined fittings - James Huang / Immediate Media
Although Moonmen typically builds in titanium, the Colorado company is playing with steel, too - James Huang / Immediate Media
The dual top tubes on this Moonmen steel fat bike are set ultra-wide - James Huang / Immediate Media
Moonmen is getting into the fancy head tube badge game, too - James Huang / Immediate Media
Another stunner from Moonmen came in this titanium fat bike - James Huang / Immediate Media
There's an awful lot going on here between the dual top tubes, down tube gusset, reinforced fork crown, and media blasted logo on this Moonmen fat bike - James Huang / Immediate Media
A mix of shaped plates and tubes are used to create the necessary mud clearance on this Moonmen fat bike - James Huang / Immediate Media
Holy dropout, Batman! - James Huang / Immediate Media
This Moonmen titanium hardtail had easily the shortest chainstays of any fat bike we saw at NAHBS - James Huang / Immediate Media
Now that's a riser bar - James Huang / Immediate Media
Eriksen Cycles' full-suspension titanium mountain bike frame uses no pivots at the dropouts - James Huang / Immediate Media
Fabricating this chainstay box must be incredibly arduous - James Huang / Immediate Media
Eriksen could have just drilled a hole in the seat tube to run the internally routed dropper post cable but this is a much more finished-looking solution - James Huang / Immediate Media
The rocker link and seatpost collar are anodized to match - James Huang / Immediate Media
Steady hands, folks, steady hands - James Huang / Immediate Media
Pretty much everyone had fat bikes on hand at NAHBS - James Huang / Immediate Media
Whereas many other builders resort to machined fittings or yokes to create more clearance, Eriksen sticks to shaped tubes and just goes a little more conservative in terms of chainstay length - James Huang / Immediate Media
AluBoo's fat bike uses a mix of alloy and bamboo - James Huang / Immediate Media
Portland contract builder Zen Fabrication has launched its own-brand range with a full complement of models like this steel hardtail - James Huang / Immediate Media
Zen's frames use a visually appealing mix of paint and exposed tubing - James Huang / Immediate Media
A short section of flat plate provides some extra clearance on this Zen hardtail - James Huang / Immediate Media
Domestic US production is almost nonexistent from bigger brands but it's common in the handmade crowd - James Huang / Immediate Media
Michigan builder Scott Quiring incorporated some pretty interesting ideas into this 29 titanium hardtail - James Huang / Immediate Media
Quiring built this chainstay box from pieces of flat titanium plate. Clearance on the Bontrager 29x3.00 Chupacabra was still tight, though - James Huang / Immediate Media
Whereas the majority of the chainstay yoke was built from flat plate on this Quiring 29 bike, a bit of tubing was used for the chainring cutout - James Huang / Immediate Media
Boost 148 rear hubs are getting all the attention but Michigan builder Scott Quiring decided to use the existing 150mm-wide standard instead on this 29 hardtail - James Huang / Immediate Media
The kinked seat tube allows for a tighter rear end - James Huang / Immediate Media
Jim Kish has been in the framebuilding business for more than 20 years - and it shows - James Huang / Immediate Media
Colorado builder Reeb showed off a new gearbox variant of its Donkadonk steel fat bike - complete with Gates' new red belt - James Huang / Immediate Media
There's plenty of clearance on Reeb's gearbox-equipped Donkadonk - James Huang / Immediate Media
Reeb's new Pinion gearbox-equipped Donkadonk steel fat bike will sell for US$3,200 including the gearbox - double the cost of a standard Donkadonk - James Huang / Immediate Media
So where did Reeb gets its name, you might wonder? It's the bike offshoot of Colorado brewer Oskar Blues - and Reeb is beer spelled backwards - James Huang / Immediate Media
Reeb has added a new titanium fat bike to its range for this year called the Ty Donk - James Huang / Immediate Media
Reeb is sticking to the slightly narrower 170mm rear hub spacing on the new Ty Donk frame but there's still room for 4.8in-wide rubber - James Huang / Immediate Media
Slider dropouts on the Reeb Ty Donk will allow for a wide range of drivetrain options - James Huang / Immediate Media
The 2015 North American Handmade Bicycle Show may have closed its doors a few weeks ago but we’re still emotionally recovering from the onslaught of incredible bikes that were on hand there.
For this round of coverage, we bring you some of the most stunning mountain and fat bikes to catch our eyes this time around, including the return of Fat City Cycles, Eriksen Cycles’ perennially stunning titanium frames, Sycip’s neverending blend of art and machine, incredible fabrication work from Michigan builder Quiring Cycles and upstart outfit Moonmen, and more.
Another stunner from moonmen came in this titanium fat bike:
We're still picking our jaws off the floor after seeing this titanium fat bike from new Colorado builder Moonmen
So grab a coffee and click through the gallery above – oh, and make sure to keep your wallet well out of reach because it’s safe to say that you’ll definitely have the old ‘n+1’ rule in mind after seeing some of these. Happy viewing, and stay tuned for more to come.
James Huang is BikeRadar's former technical editor. After leaving BikeRadar in 2016, he worked at CyclingTips and Escape Collective. He now runs the Substack cycling publication N-1 Bikes.
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