With the new Surly Moonlander Pinion fat bike release, I thought I’d introduce you to a handful of other bike manufacturers that can also help you cross the Sahara desert, Australian Outback, Mongolian Steppe or Alaskan snowfields!
All of these fat bikes feature a weather-sealed Pinion gearbox, and many offer belt drive compatibility too. That means no more snow-packed and frozen drivetrains, and no more chain lube either.
Instead, you can expect perfect, reliable shifting and no drivetrain hassle.
To make this happen, Pinion fat bikes use high offset spiders that push the front sprocket out further to achieve the appropriate chain clearance to the rear tyre.
In addition, most of these bikes employ Pinion fat crank arms, which have a wider q-factor or distance between the pedals than typical (40mm extra width).
The fattest fat bikes (4.8″+) are currently using 197mm thru-axle rear hubs. They will all require the Pinion fat bike crank arms with a 206mm Q-factor, which is actually a bit narrower than a fat bike with a rear derailleur.
That said, it’s possible to use narrower stance Pinion crank arms if you build a bike using a 177mm thru-axle rear hub. The only downside is that you will lose a modest amount of tyre clearance. Make sure to consult the frame builder first, but expect around 4.0″ maximum tyre clearance.
Right, let’s take a look at these fat beauties.
Black Sheep
- Frame Material: Titanium
- Tyre Clearance: 27.5 x 4.5″
- Place of Manufacture: USA
- Price: Enquire
James at Black Sheep builds all kinds of quirky custom titanium bikes. This particular bike won an award at the 2019 North American Handmade Bike Show!
This retro-inspired fat bike has been built around a Pinion gearbox and carbon wheelset wrapped with 4.5″ wide Bontrager Barbegazi tyres. It features a tall and wide handlebar that’s also custom-made by James, and a dropper seatpost that allows the rider to maneuver their body around the bike on steep descents.
It looks like an especially fun bike to hoon around on.
Carver Ti Omega Beast
- Frame Material: Titanium
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 5.0+”
- Place of Manufacture: Asia
- Price: Enquire
The titanium Carver Omega’Beast has more than 5″ of tyre clearance, making it the fattest Pinion fat bike by this USA-based company. It’ll cross snowfields, climb stairs, and descend rock gardens with ease thanks to its big tyre footprint.
Like many fat bikes, you can fit different-sized wheel and tyre combinations on this bike when you don’t need the full floatation of a 5.0″ wide tyre. The Omega Beast will also fit 29 × 3.0″ and 27.5 × 4.0″ wheelsets.
For an extra US $300 Carver will also modify their standard frames to your liking, or allow you to design the frame geometry completely from scratch.
Hilite Pinion Fat Bike
- Frame Material: Titanium
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 4.8″
- Place of Manufacture: Switzerland
- Price: Enquire
Hilite was one of the first manufacturers of a fat bike with a Pinion 18-speed gearbox and Gates belt drivetrain. Their titanium bikes are all custom-made in Switzerland, and this particular Pinion fat bike was built for a 200cm (6ft7) tall rider.
The rider wanted their bike to be especially upright for their 100cm leg inseam (40″), so the frame head tube was made as long as possible to accommodate an uncut suspension fork steerer.
There is a very neat CNC-milled yoke at the chainstays that provides both excellent tyre clearance and a super clean look. I like that the customer decided to paint the titanium frame, as it now stands out amongst the brushed frame finish that’s more common.
Meriwether
- Frame Material: Steel
- Tyre Clearance: 27.5 x 4.5″
- Place of Manufacture: USA
- Price: Enquire
Meriwether is another company producing custom Pinion fat bikes in the USA.
This steel fat bike build has a trail frame geometry that suits both a 140mm travel suspension fork, as well as an extra-long rigid fork with bosses to mount cargo cages for bikepacking.
The frame and fork are designed to be tough enough for steep technical trails, loaded touring, and winter fat biking. There are dual portage handles at the seat stays to help carry the bike when it’s fitted with a full frame pack.
The frame can accommodate multiple wheel diameters better than most by using tilted sliding dropouts. This helps to maintain a similar bottom bracket height when swapping between plus and fat tyres.
Myth Cycles Chimera
- Frame Material: Steel
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 4.8″ or 29 x 3.0″
- Place of Manufacture: USA
- Price: Enquire
The Myth Cycles Chimera is a custom steel Pinion fat bike built using Reynolds 853 tubes.
The Chimera uses a slack head tube angle to keep things stable on rocky descents, and it’s built around a 197mm rear hub to maximise the tyre clearance.
This model is equipped with belt drive, which combined with the Pinion gearbox ensures a very long-lasting and almost entirely maintenance-free drivetrain.
The Chimera can be chosen in four stock sizes or custom, and there are ample colour options.
Nicolai Argon Fat Pi
- Frame Material: Aluminium
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 4.5″
- Place of Manufacture: Germany
- Price: Enquire
Nicolai bikes have one of the most consistent design languages in the industry, and the Argon Fat Pi is no exception. The large diameter aluminium tubes, angular CNC machined parts, and quirky paint jobs create a bike that could be manufactured by no other.
Nicolai’s take on the fat bike is a hardtail mountain bike that not only accommodates 4.5″ wide tyres, but has great trail-munching frame geometry. In combination with the Pinion 12-speed gearbox and Gates belt drive, you should always have a reliable and low maintenance bike that you can count on.
The bike is clearly designed to be ridden year round, but Nicolai specifically recommend taking it to the Iditarod Trail Race across Alaska, or on a big bikepacking expedition to a remote place on Earth.
REEB Pinion Donkadonk
- Frame Material: Steel
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 4.5″
- Place of Manufacture: USA
- Price: US $10,500
REEB think that Pinion’s light, compact, and carefree gearbox is perfectly suited to the rigours of fat biking as it’s sealed from the elements, works great in cold conditions, and can handle way more torque than your legs can dish out.
Rolling Dale
- Frame Material: Titanium
- Tyre Clearance: 27.5 x 4.5″
- Place of Manufacture: Canada
- Price: Enquire
Rolling Dale specialises in building fully custom titanium off-road bikes. Many of Dale’s builds are for mountain biking, gravel, bikepacking… or fat biking!
Dale uses a 4-axis CNC machine to manufacture the chainstay yoke for maximum tyre clearance, and he even machines and anodises his logo into the frame head tube. It’s all very neat!
Make sure to commission some titanium handlebars and accessories to complete the look.
Smokestone BowTi
- Frame Material: Titanium
- Tyre Clearance: 26×4.8″, 27.5×4.5″, 29 x 3.0″
- Place of Manufacture: Asia
- Price: Enquire
The Smokestone BowTi is another fat trail bike.
It’s a bit slacker than other Pinion fat bikes and can be fitted with a rigid or suspension fork with up to 130mm travel. The top tube is curved, increasing the frame standover for those occasions where emergency clearance is required.
Smokestone says that after riding this bike, switching back to a traditional mountain bike “could come as a shock” as you’ll find yourself riding up rough climbs you never thought possible, and you’ll descend trails you earmarked for your enduro rig.
They go on to say that this bike has the “feel of a full-suspension mountain bike”, but without the maintenance that frame pivots and a rear shock bring to the party.
A cool thing is that this frame is that it’s fully internally guided, meaning you won’t ever need to faff around changing any cables. This also includes routing for a dropper post.
The BowTi comes standard with 197mm rear dropouts for 4.8″ tyres, but you can also get it built with a 177mm option if you don’t need to run larger than 4.2” tyres.
Smokestone is also happy to alter these titanium frames to suit your needs. You can get the frame with rear rack mounts, additional bottle cage mounts, external cable routing, and you can even tweak the frame geometry.
Surly Moonlander
- Frame Material: Steel
- Tyre Clearance: 24 x 6.25″
- Place of Manufacture: Asia
- Price: US $4199
The inspiration for this page was the new Surly Moonlander. This steel bike is unique for two rather obvious reasons: it has absolutely monstrous tyres, and it’s a mid-tail (long chainstays).
This new fat tyre size allows you to run lower tyre pressures than ever before, increasing the tyre footprint on the ground, and providing more flotation over this world’s softest surfaces. You can actually drop the tyre pressure down to just 1 or 2 psi!
The extra-long chainstays make the bike super stable at speed and prevent your front wheel from lifting while riding up steep inclines.
The gearbox model that Surly has picked is the Pinion C1.9 XR. This is a 9-speed box with a 568% range – that’s even more gear range than the best 1X derailleur setups.
Interestingly, Pinion made custom crank arms and a high-offset sprocket spider just for this bike! I suspect the q-factor is around 230mm as a result (24mm wider than normal).
This is also the cheapest Pinion bike on the list as it is not custom-built for each customer.
Travers Bat Fastard
- Frame Material: Titanium
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 5.0″
- Place of Manufacture: Asia
- Price: Enquire
Travers Bikes in the UK designs their titanium frames in CAD and gets them built for the customer in Asia. The delivery time on their custom frames is usually 4 to 12 weeks.
The Bat Fastard is a Pinion fat bike that can swallow 26 x 5.0″ wide tyres. It uses a 12 x 197mm rear axle, long chainstays, and each of the four frame sizes is notably upright for its size. There are cargo cage mounts on the top and bottom of the down tube.
The Travers Bikes logo is very neatly engraved into the head tube and chainstays of the frame, and there is some super sleek internal cable routing that feeds right into the head tube.
Ventana El Gordo
- Frame Material: Aluminium
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 4.8″
- Place of Manufacture: USA
- Price: Enquire
Ventana is a mountain bike manufacturer in the USA who have been building aluminium frames since the 1980s. Every piece of every Ventana frame is designed and produced by Ventana in Rancho Cordova, California.
By taking advantage of their rapid prototyping, build-in-house fabrication techniques, and innovative design expertise, Ventana has been on the front lines of adopting non-standard wheel sizes including the fat bike sizes.
The El Gordo is a suspension fork ready Pinion fat bike with clearance for 4.8″ tyres (197mm axle version). You can also choose a 177mm rear dropout for 4.0″ tyres, as well as any colour, sizing or custom frame geometry.
Uniquely, the Ventana El Gordo is available in a broad range of sizes from extra small right up to 4XL.
Bonus: Azub Pinion Fat Trike
- Frame Material: Aluminium
- Tyre Clearance: 26 x 4.8″
- Place of Manufacture: Czech Republic
- Price: €7049
Here’s a bonus Pinion fat bike for you – a recumbent fat trike!
The AZUB FAT is at home on rough roads, beaches or in snowfall. In fact, having three fat wheels will allow you to float over softer terrain than the 4.8″ tyres would usually permit. This is simply because each tyre has less overall load than a typical two-wheel fat bike.
One advantage of using a Pinion gearbox on a trike is that you don’t need the fat bike crank arms. This allows the trike to pedal just like a regular bicycle – no wide-foot stance required.
AZUB employ the Pinion 18-speed gearbox with a 636% gear range to achieve both higher and lower speeds than usual. You’ll find this especially important on a trike as you cannot put your body weight into turning over big gears.
Bonus: Carver Four-Wheel Fat Bike
And lastly, here’s one more bonus Pinion fat bike build for you. This Carver four-wheel bike was custom-designed to ride to the most southern point on Earth in Antarctica.
The titanium bike is fitted with four 5.5″ wide tyres at 2 psi each providing massive float across polar terrain. The 2x front and 2x rear hubs are connected so the wheels do not spin independently.
The Pinion gearbox at the crankset provides all 18 gears on this bike, and is connected to the rear wheel via a driving chain that runs between the rear tyres!
There is only a front disc brake to stop this bike – luckily Antarctica isn’t too hilly. You can read more about this unique bike HERE.
