'13 Surly

You know by now that Moonlander picks up where Pugsley left off. Moonlander accomodates staggeringly wide 4.7? tires on 100mm rims. Such a large footprint allows you to ride them at very low pressure, and like a snowshoe enables even greater traction and float over all kinds of terrain…wet stuff, roots, rocks, pebbles, gravel, sand, and many types of snow.

Like all of our framesets, the Moonlander is made of Surly 4130 CroMoly steel. It features 135mm-spaced, 28mm-offset, rear-loading Surly horizontal dropouts (track ends) with a derailleur hanger…meaning you can set it up as a singlespeed or geared bike, derailleured or internally geared. The bottom bracket height gives you clearance for bushwhacking and monster-trucking. The dropped and gusseted toptube maximizes standover height. And the tallish headtube allows you to set your rig up with a comfortable riding position for those long days grinding out miles in the saddle.

Moonlander’s fork measures 447mm axle-to-crown...same as the Pug, so all of our fat forks are interchangeable between the two models. The disc mount allows you to use a front disc brake caliper with a 135mm O.L.D. rear hub…or with a 135mm-spaced Surly front hub. Mid-blade thru-eyelets and lower rack barrels are included for installing fenders and racks. We offer the Moonlander as a frameset and as a complete bike. The complete bike components were chosen for their durability and their suitability to the task at hand. We chose Microshift thumbshifters because they allow you to shift even when wearing mittens. To accommodate the Clown Shoe rim/Big Fat Larry tire spec, the frame design pushes the chainline even farther outboard than that of the Pugsley, so we spec’d Moonlander with our new MWOD crank system. The MWOD (Mr. Whirly Offset Double) ditches the big ring and moves the middle and granny ring outboard. The 2 x 9 drivetrain offers the gear ratios most applicable to a bike of this type while avoiding chain/tire interference. Works like a charm.

This year, we changed a few things. The 120tpi Big Fat Larry tires now have a lighter casing, allowing greater conformation to the ground it’s rolling over and reducing rolling weight. The fork is offset like the frame to allow front and rear wheel interchangeability. And we’re now offering an extra large 24? size, available as a complete bike and also frameset.

Moonlander, like its name implies, is meant to go beyond where normal bikes, even normal fat bikes, can go. It is designed from the ground up to ride where there are no roads, no trails, no people.