Three Bikes in One

During construction of my latest Pugsley, to replace the 9zero7 that I never came to enjoy, I wondered if I really needed three bicycles – actually four if you include the Dawes Ultra Galaxy touring bike lying in bits scattered across the cosmos – okay, scattered around the shed and attic. Did I really need a Surly Ogre, a Surly Krampug and a Surly Pugsley?
When I sat looking at the bikes in the shed, comfortable in my wee folding chair with a fine Italian medium strength coffee in one hand and a large Kit-Kat in the other, I saw that there was very little difference between the three bikes. They were all made by Surly, the geometry of all three was very similar, they all had Shimano Alfine 8-speed hub gearing with 32T front chain rings and seating, steering and brakes were all almost identical. They were even all the same colour, green, for goodness sake!
The only difference I could see that made any difference at all was the wheel sets. The Ogre had 28 mm wide Halo Freedom 29er rims with Continental X-King 2.2” 29er tyres, the Krampug had 50 mm wide Surly Rabbit Hole rims shod with Surly 29” x 3” Knard tyres and the Pugsley had a wheels set based on 65 mm wide Surly Marge Lite rims with Surly 3.8” Larry tyres.
Now, with a bit of wheel re-building and hub swapping to suit the offset rear of the Pugsley frame, I could get rid off one Pugsley frame as well as the Ogre frame and keep the three wheels sets for use on the single remaining Pugsley frame. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to swap out a wheel set, which is particularly easy with the Alfine hub setup. Mind, I would probably go for the 82 mm wide Rolling Darryl rim to base the third set on...

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