The Salsa Fargo

Hey All,

I have been riding a Salsa Fargo for a little while now. Before you get too much farther, I have to admit this is a biased opinion. (Hard to have an unbiased opinion. If there was no bias to it, it's just the facts, ma'am.) So far I love this bike. I've worked in shops and have had several bikes in my time, I classify myself as a "bike geek."

I seem to be amassing bikes as I go. They get replaced and disappear and recently have been showing back up. The Fargo is the first bike I have ever owned that actually makes me think about getting rid of bikes. It's the only bike I've ever owned that I truly feel could be the ONLY bike I own. That would be thinning the heard from 7 to 1. (Or 7.5 to 1.5 if you count the Skate Bike.)

The Plan:

First off lets cover, real quick like, what the Fargo is intended to be. Salsa has been cultivating a line of bikes based on this wacky "adventure by bike" mentality, which is 10lb Awesome in a 5lb bag! The Fargo is intended to be a drop bar adventure touring bike. The geometry is designed around using the drop bars, 29'r wheels, a higher riding position and, on my version, a non suspension corrected fork(more on this at the end). In comparison to a rigid 29er it's a little longer in the wheel base and has a lower BB height. Both of these are the "touring" inspiration of the adventure touring theme.

My Bike:

I'm 5'8" with a real 30" inseam. I test rode a Medium Fargo at University Bikes in Boulder. (Side note: The folks at U-bikes were awesome and let me rock the Fargo on both 29x2.3" tires and 700x38 tires, they were stoked on the bike and stoked to show it to some one.) On the medium I was pretty sure my wife and I's plans of curating a family would be in danger on uneven ground so I went with the size small. On the test ride I was struck by how the bike changed personalities. Like Jeckyl and Hyde, when the bike had the 2.3's it felt stable and confident and a little disappointed that there wasn't any single track on my test route. When we put the 38's on there it felt fast and nimble ready to go tear up the nastiest of urban/suburban commutes. So I ordered my size small frame from U-Bikes and got back to spec'ing the parts.

The Build:

I built up my Fargo a little different than the stock complete from Salsa. I had some specific intentions for my bike, those being:

• Commuting - paved, dirt road, single track and deep gravel on my 5 mile commute
• Fully loaded touring paved and mild unpaved
• Gravel road exploration
• single-track

I went with a large sweep bar, the Origin 8 Space Bar. I've never ridden drop bars off road but they didn't give me tinglies, in a good way, on the test ride. So, I went with something else I'd never tried. Brilliant, I know. I also went with a touring crank. A Truvative Fire-x, because I could get it with a 48t big ring, for those paved loaded descents. Sram X-9 thumb shifters/drive train changes the gears and some Mavic hoops on XT hubs rounded out the bike, ish. Avid BB7's to reduce the pucker factor and I also got a front and rear rack and Planet Bikes Cascadia 29er fenders. (Which are awesome fenders.)

I specifically targeted the Fargo for it's versatility. The 29 wheels give me a ton of tire choices. I wanted disc brakes for the touring and single track. Plus a slurry of braze-on's for racks, fenders and bottle cages meant I wouldn't have to rig up everything.

Single-Track:

Stable and confident, I was able to take loose off camber corners faster on the Fargo than on my 26" full suspension rig. I also felt a lot more stable in deep gravel both up hill and down. However, with the lower BB I clipped more pedals and the 48t chainring has a couple "custom" shift ramps. The added confidence from the Fargo did translate well back to my 26er.

Commuting/Touring:

With the ability to swap from a 700x32 to a 29x2.3 I was able to change routes and tires to match my mood and any sides trips to and from work. The added stability translated well in the bad weather. I had a lot of trouble with the high rake on the front fork getting the front low-rider rack mounted level. I ended up putting it in backwards to get it close to level. Which worked for a 100 mile touring weekend and for trips to and from work. Also with the low location of the braze-on's on my seat stays there was a lot or distance to cover from the rear of the rear rack to the bolts.

This allowed a slight wobble on the loaded rack at 35mph. 40 turned out to be as fast as I was willing to go. I think a stronger rack, like a Tubus (or the new stuff from Salsa, more later) would not have had this issue, nor a larger sized frame. I think I gave up some efficiency on the road most of the tour, but got a lot back when we turned off the pavement and did less walking, when I caught up.

Gravel:

As a gravel machine it did well with the bigger tires. I have to take a lot of pavement to get to the gravel around here so I started out with the 700x32's. In doing I clipped several rocks with the pedals, granted I ride a larger pedal. However when I switched over to my 29x2.3's and tried the same route, it went much better. I didn't loose as much on the road as I expected and gained a lot more on the gravel.

Conclusion:

I LOVE this bike, did I mention that? Should be enough but for those that don't want to read

all of the above, (in the words of Inigo Montoya) "Lemme sum up".

Fast, stable and confident off road and in bad conditions but low BB height. Great for touring (thank you low BB height.), commuting and all kinds of rides. Getting racks to fit is a challenge but can be over come. Disc brakes allow easy wheel changes to accomodate the tire options. I appreciate that this bike takes me places like the above picture.

New to the Table:

Salsa has not given up on this bike by any stretch. They have revamped the fork/frame geo to allow the option of a suspension fork and their new Anything Cage. Also Salsa has a slew of new racks that will work much better than anything I have tried up to now. Also, it come in Ti as well. Yeah, so combine the 'I'd sell all of my bikes but this one' mentality with a Ti version over Chromo. Think about that for a second and picture your garage with A bike in it, clean, tidy, spacious. Yet you can't seem to get that grin off of your face, weird.

Recommendation:

If you plan on riding a bike to something that isn't pavement, and riding from there, ever. Buy this bike. LOVE IT!

P.S. I warned you it was biased.

P.P.S. I'm working on kid toting solutions currently. As soon as The Kiddo has an 18" circumference head and I have something to put him in I'll let you know what has worked well for me.