Rocky Mountain debuted their new fat bike, the Suzi Q, for 2017 which is intended to be a much more agile, fast fat bike, rather than a powder floating big wheeled monster. The engineers at Rocky Mountain designed this frame with shorter chainstays (434mm) and an extended top tub to give the rig a more aggressive ride position. They also designed this frame with a narrower Q factor (roughly 44mm narrower than the industry standard for fat bikes), which makes for a really comfortable ride despite the aggressive position.
The Suzi Q -50 which is demo’d here is outfitted with Shimano SLX brakes and a Shimano XT drivetrain, including an 11-46T cassette, which is super helpful on those long, snowy climbs. The frame is made out of hydroformed alloy and sports a smoothwall C13 carbon fork. If you’re looking for suspension you can slap a Bluto on this frame without compromising the factory geometry. The Suzi Q does not come with a dropper post but it can be added, and the frame does have internal cable routing to accommodate stealth droppers. The Suzi Q is rolling on 27.5×3.8″ Maxxis Minion FBF tires on SUNringle rims, which come tubeless-ready.
This bike is definitely a race-ready machine made for groomed trails, snowy dirt roads, or even some summer singletrack. It’s light, quick, agile, and aggressive compared to a lot of big tired bikes out there. I felt right at home riding this bike as I typically like a more forward, aggressive position on the bike. It was an efficient climber and I felt great getting out of the saddle for climbing or sprinting. The 3.8″ Maxxis Minion FBFs felt like the perfect tire for this type of bike. They were a fast rolling tire that still gave me plenty of confidence in the tight, turny stuff, although they definantly don’t offer as much float as some larger tires on the market. If that is something that is important to you this bike can handle up to 4.2″ tires to cruise though fresh pow.
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