FortyFour Snakedriver
My first fat bike, the Big Boy, was designed at a time when fat bikes ran 135/170 hubs and 3.8-4.0 inch tires. It was also designed with a year-round use in mind. Good for snow but fun on dirt trails, too. I kept updating it over the years and after several winters it became clear that fat-biking totally is my thing. So, five years later I pulled the trigger on a snow-specific FortyFour, a Snakedriver with 27.5” wheels with room for 4.5” tires. The geometry was optimized for snow riding. A slightly lower BB to bring the center of gravity down, a longer wheelbase, and a slacker head tube for more directional stability. Hub spacing grew to 150/197 and the frame received a T47 BB shell. Kris also convinced me to use a dropper, for which I did see a number of benefits for snow rides. After time with a dropper, I would now also equip any dirt MTB with one. I can ride without one, but it’s truly nice to make use of one. As with all my other bikes, the Snakedriver was equipped with a Jones bar. In this case an H-Bar Loop Carbon 710. Winter rides often happen at night in the dark, and the Loop was the perfect bar for a custom front light mount. In February 2019 I studded the Bontrager Gnarwhal tires. How did I fat-bike without them for 5 years?
| Info | ||
|---|---|---|
| First Ride | November 16, 2018 | |
| Bike Weight | 14.2 kg | |
| Mileage | 2'788 km | |
| Frame Color | Prismatic Powders Clear Vision over Illusion Money | |
| Components | ||
| Type | Brand | Model |
| Frame | Forty-Four | Snakedriver |
| Fork | Forty-Four | Thru-Axle, Tapered |
| Handlebar | Jones | H-Bar Loop Carbon 710 |
| Brakes | Formula | Cura 4 |
| Headset | Chris King | I7 InSet |
| Seatpost | Thomson | Covert Dropper, 150mm |
| Stem | Zipp | Service Course SL, 90mm |
| Wheels | Industry Nine | BigRig 760 |
| Pedals | Crank Brothers | Eggbeater 3 |
| Tires | Bontrager | Gnarwhal, 27.5x4.5 |
| Saddle | Prologo | Scratch NDR |
| Brake Rotors | TRP | TRP-13, 180/160mm |
| Bottom Bracket | Chris King | ThreadFit T47 30X |
| Chainring | Garbaruk | Melon, 30T |
| Crankset | Race Face | Turbine |
| Derailleur | SRAM | XX1 Eagle |
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FortyFour Marauder
In May of 2017, I discovered a fine hairline crack in the seat tube of my Kid Dangerous. The crack started at the hole of the seat tube slot and ran towards the weld of the left side seat stay where it followed the edge of the weld for a little bit. The bike had been ridden 5'500 kilometers on rough Swiss single-track. Kris covered it under his lifetime warranty and began building me a Marauder at the end of the same month. For a one-man shop that has a waitlist and basically builds one bike at a time, he certainly made it a mission to get me back on a FortyFour.
My Kid Dangerous was one of the early client bikes Kris had built and it was an awesome bike. The Marauder got a bit of a longer front triangle and was the first frame Kris built with a T47 bottom bracket shell. I spent a good amount of time online to find a new paint. I loved the flat black on Kid Dangerous, but I sort of made it a habit to never use the same color twice. I wanted to stay with dark paint and settled with Casper Clear over Speedway Black by Prismatic Powders. There's no bike I could find in this powder coat. It's a finish occasionally used for custom car rims.
The look of the frame was and is mind-blowing. In the years between the Kid Dangerous was welded and the Marauder was built, Kris has improved his frames in every way. He added new tools to achieve a better build consistency, refined the build process and the time spent welding many frames are clearly visible in each single weld. Kid Dangerous had been an excellent bike. The Marauder is a level better.
Just like all my other mountain bikes, this single-speed was equipped with a Jones H-Bar handlebar. A cockpit change was made in August of 2020. In October 2017 I had to replace the wheels and while doing so, I finally made the jump to tubeless. Yeah, while I was an early adopter of 29ers, early for a Swiss to be gravel grinding and early again to fat bike, I was a total retro grouch when it came to running tubeless tires. Nox Composites Farlow and WTB tires made the switch fairly painless, though.
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