Independent Fabrication rolled out a prototype Chubby Deluxe fat bike, literally bringing the proof of concept as the show bike.
This one’s a tooling prototype frame so it’s made without their trademark IF dropouts. But Gary still machined their crown into the solid dropouts, living up to their reputation for attention to detail.
It’ll be a mix of Reynolds (front) and True Temper (rear) tubing. Rear spacing is 170mm, but they’re custom so you could rider it with 190mm of axle space if you like. You could also get it with a 44mm headtube if a tapered fork’s in your plans.
What makes it unique is that it’s basically a big mountain bike, not an excessively long fat bike. That means it’s of the newer generation of sharper handling, faster fat bikes, not the touring style geometry of yore…
The paint is a new PPG Brilliant Series sparkle paint that they’ll be using across the range in a variety of hues.
They’re now offering stainless steel mountain bikes. They’ve been offering it for road, but not MTB. They prototyped with 953, but it was too hard to shape and curve the way they wanted. Road bikes use Columbus XCR, which is more malleable, but they don’t draw chain- and seat stay tubes, so IF went with the new Reynolds 921. It’s a cold worked material, so it can be bent and shaped after being drawn without adding residual stress and weakening the material or requiring secondary heat treating.
