Fat Boy Deluxe

Well I finally finished the Fuji Scorcher. Did a few short rides around the block to test her out and everything was good. A lot harder to make this bike skid. I can do it, but not very far and certainly not enough to warrant not having a front brake. The front brake that’s on there seems to be incompatible with the newer brake levers I have and the newer brake I have seems to be incompatible with older fork. So what is one to do. Spearman hooked me with a DiaCompe brake lever in exchange for a beer. Hopefully it will be able to provide the pull needed for the older brake. Without further banter, here it is:

Now for a little about the bike. It’s an old ass Fuji Absolute. I’ve been unable to find any information on this bike on the interweb thingy. I found one link to someone’s pic of the same bike on the FGG. It seems to be an early 80’s lugged road bike. This bike was my first fixed gear. I originally ran it just like it was set up for road, only I took the gears off, put on a fixed 27″ rear wheel, and ran a punishing 52×16 gearing. Living on a giant hill I learned quickly what to (not) do when riding this bike. Fast forward a ways into the future and the bike is in the shed after having been hit by a car, sending the frame out of wack a little and giving me some cash to drop on an already built up Bianchi Pista. Well with all the greatness that is that Pista…I decided to pull the parts and bring back the Fuji. This bike has soul, not to mention more toe room and space for bigger tires.

She (Vanessa) is setup as so:

• Fuji Absolute frame/fork
• Salsa Delgado rims
• Phil Wood front mountain disc hub
• LeVel fixed gear hub (with spacers to fit 135 or 120) with LeVel proprietary 16 tooth cog
• SRAM PC-1 bmx chain (soon to be replaced as I’ve already mangled 5 links)
• Sugino 600XD crankset with 46 tooth chainring (one of three things I actually bought to specifically build up this bike)
• MKS Touring pedals with SOMA toe clips (another thing I bought for this bike…already off as the toe clips continually came loose from the pedals) - replaced with Candy clipless pedals.
• Tange 1″ threaded headset
• Profile H2O 1″ quill stem with “removable face plate” (that’s the reason I bought this stem)
• On One Mungo handlebars
• Stock seatpost
• Selle Italia Gel saddle
• New Belgium Brewing front reflector/bottle opener (finally! - an old roommate of mine got this for me)

So that there is Vanessa. She’s one tough mother… She takes on singletrack, gravel, dirt roads, cars, and more importantly - my big ass. And she does all this with zero complaints.

DT