On one fatty - still decent in 2023?

Not sure about the On One Fatty but I’ve got a Specialized Fatboy which is great fun. It doesn’t get ridden a lot but it makes a great bikepacking mountain bike (as opposed to the gravel bike) and the amount of grip you get makes you grin.

I’m not sure I’d buy one again but then I’d probably not sell mine either. Aside from wheels and BB everything else is completely standard too so not difficult getting spares (at least so far).

Things like tyres are becoming more difficult to find, and budget options for fat specific parts are few and far between (hubs/forks/cranks). There is also a definite lack of new parts being released, the new hope pro 5 not having a fat option for example.

On-one did a decent job of designing a good UK fat bike (trail rather than snow),  but the steel one will always be a heavyweight. Good fun bikes all the same.

Hubs and in particular free hubs are almost impossible to source for the oem wheels. These are missized anyway so all tyres run baggy. QR axles are from the ark and aren’t standard Fat hubs, making upgrading to front boing ruinously expensive. That said it is monstrously good fun, with great handling, more grip than you can possibly imagine and an ability to turn every ride into a riot - proper grin inducing but at the same time astonishingly capable. Wet roots simply don’t exist on a fat bike.

Many have been upgraded with RS Blutos. I’d avoid as the damping’s rudimentary at best and hang on for a wren or manitou mastodon equipped bike.

Almost forgot: they come equipped with avids. Mine went in the bin.

With forks a fatty is a very capable trail bike.
Absolutely crap in Surrey mud though. The rest of the time it’s a get out of jail free bike. If I’m going anywhere new it’s the bike I take.
Mines for sale as I’ve run out of space . Hope wheels so spares won’t be an issue, I’m keeping the dropper.
It’s a small fatty. Im 5’8 and it fits perfect. £500

I ride my fatty most weeks, usually on the beach or dunes with my binoculars in my handlebar bag or along the river bank, again looking for wildlife.
I’ve had it a long time now and can’t see me ever being without it.
Great bike for bimbling about whatever the terrain.

My fatty is still my main bike. Just had a bit of a rebuild, the freehub was easy enough to find but the back axle is a weak point and not so easy. I picked up a custom reinforced axle from the owners fb page, which is useful to join.
I had a few problems finding the parts for the drivetrain as I wanted to keep 2x10 but wish i'd gone for the 1x10 microshift now would have saved me money and time.

Still love mine, after many years. To be fair, it has acquired quite a few improvements, Mastodon 100mm fork and Hope hubs, Halo Tundra rims. Not fancy, but really, really fun to ride in the hills around Angus. I wouldn't be without it.
German shop R2 still has a fair range of fat specific components. Maxxis Minions work very well in Scottish conditions, max 4.0 in the rear though and 4.8 up front.

If you can find one of the crop of well priced fatbikes that came after it, they'll almost all do you better- as mentioned above it uses standards that were well accepted for traditional fatbiking but that got pretty much left behind as they went mainstream. I personally wouldn't buy a fatbike that can't take a 4.8 and I think that's the case for the original Fatty, frinstance. That makes such a difference for the way I ride my Dune including a lot of pentlands miles, it ended up being my preferred bike for that once it had the 4.8s.

But that obviously depends loads on what you want to do with it. I'm biased way towards the trailbike end of it, I barely ever ride it on sand, I don't bikepack or do long distance or anything like that and those are probably areas where the fatty still makes a lot of sense?

Pricewise that does seem high unless it's a very good spec. There's a Specialized Fatboy on ebay just now at £500 if you can use a small, and an SE F@R... Great shame you can't get a new Dune any more

The one bike I miss the most is an On One Fatty.

Mine had the carbon forks and the most fun was had by putting a 2x crankset on with a 46t rear.
Meant it could climb / ride through pretty much anything, which was both satisfying and hilarious.

Sure it wasn't a great overall bike but for the limited times and places it was good, it was very good.

As N+1, providing you have the space and funds - perfect.

Mine ultimately got replaced by a 27.5+ wheeled hard tail on 2.8" tyres. Does 90% of the fat bikes fun but a lot more versatile as a general mtb.

Still miss that 10% though !

Yea they were an absolute hoot to ride. Most brands made them very steep to try and keep the steering quick. On-One gave them a 68deg head angle and added loads of offset to the fork (a bit like later Stooges). IME geometry trumps an axle standard on a hub and fork you'll probably never upgrade anyway.

The hubs were serviceable enough that unless you actually cracked something* they'll be fine (and with a bit of googling you could probably figure out what the OEM was anyway). And there's a lot of fattys about there so used spares are fairly easy to find and if you Google for 135mm or 170mm hubs there's still loads in stock.

*The fatty trail axle tube is a weak point, thankfully it's just a plain tube and plenty of people have been making replacements from stainless tubes.

The tyres weren't baggy, all fat tyres are like that, because all* fat rims are single wall construction to keep the weight acceptable. I'm sure that rumour only gained traction because half the fat bikes in the UK are probably on-ones, and very few people ever had to change tyres or work on another bike. There are bodges with bubble wrap and split inner tubes to make everything tubeless with a track pump.

*With the exception of carbon rims, and more expensive tubeles rims have propper bead locks.

The only part that was a PITA was the chainset. You really need to shim/space between the drive side crank and the BB to prevent the plastic top hat (or entire bearing) from walking it's way out of the shell. Doesn't matter if you use a £15 SRAM BB or a £100 Hope one, they all do it with the SRAM cranks. I did it by just putting a suitably sized ziptie arround the axle that happend to fit perfectly. Later I 3D printed one (6.5mm IIRC, but will depend on your frames tolerances). That's an issue on every SRAM bike though.

Other than that, the V2 post mount frames had stronger seatube welds, but I guess any V1s with issue have long since died, mine was fine.

Can't comment on the Fatty Trail, although I did buy one in a bundle for the cheap Bluto at one point, but I do love my fat bike. Mine started as a Dune but slowly morphed into a fairly high end Dude.

I rode it as a trail bike with Minions for a while but these days its on 4" Jumbo Jims which seems a nice balance point for dryish trails and longer distance XC, gravel and bikepacking.

I've done some longer rides where some riders are using gravel bikes and I am definitely the one grinning at the bottom of every descent. Whereas on the climbs it more than holds its own.

I upgraded the damper in the Bluto's and while I think I'd like a Mastodon, I'm not willing to fork out all that money, the Bluto will do unless you are intent on ragging the bike senseless, which I'm not sure is its forte anyway.

I've been using the bike on some new steep local trails recently while I've been in between bikes and as long as it isn't slick its very capable. I'm now looking out for spare front wheel for a grippier front tyre to make it more versatile for wetter days.

Well t<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">hat generally all </span><span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">seems jolly positive!

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thanks

what the flip is happening with this forum with all the random code?!

ElGuapo fat hubs were made by Chosen, so you might be able to track down a spare as hubs were sold under a number of brands.

The front hub on the Mk1 is 135mm with rear brake spacing - a bit of an odd early fatbike standard when folks used rear hubs up front because that’s all there was. Rear was 177mm, both were QR.

Later fatbikes settled on 150x12 for fronts and 197x12 for rears - at least going for a more recent model means less hassle in finding parts should you need to.

Ive had a couple of fat bikes over the years. Salsa Mukluk and now a full carbon Sonder Vir Fortis which I picked up last year in a Sonder sale. It's my only MTB, fully rigid running 4.4 JJ's.
We did a 30 mile loop around Coniston at the weekend, my cycling buddy has a Trek Farley which is another "modern" fatty.
They are just so much fun, they climb and descend well although you still need to pick your line, esp riding in the Lakes.
They always get odd looks from passers by. If you go on the FB facebook pages there are a few bikes up for sale, Kona and Surley will often pop up (a brand new XL Wednesday was recently up for sale). I might get a set of Mastodons for mine this year as a bit of an upgrade for my old body.

Hope used to produce a spacer kit to make their existing Fatsno front hubs fit the Mastodon fork; it was only a few quid and included longer disc mounting bolts and a couple of thin spacers to move the disc outboard a couple of mm.
QR 9mmx135 to 15x150 https://www.bike24.com/p2109562.html is where I got mine, albeit about 5 years ago.

On-One were a bit ahead of the game with geometry on their original Fatty, combining a relatively relaxed head angle (for ten years ago) with just about enough length. I still sometimes use mine for wet, winter riding in steep woods like Drumtochty or Dunkeld, as the Minions provide superb grip and steadiness, trundling down things that would scare me silly on a more conventional bike.

The Mastodon fork would be a bit of a luxury buy; mine was a present from my significant other when she came into some unexpected funds. It's superb, really tamed the front end on rough mountain descents but was a hefty cost. I went for the shorter travel version but with the better damping cartridge, which I think is a good compromise. There's room for a 4.8 FBF Minion in there along with a Mudhugger front guard.