Here's a stunning bike to kick off the working week. Fat Chance, an iconic mountain bike brand from the 90s, was resurrected last year with the relaunch of its Yo Eddy mountain bike frame and Slim Chance road frame, and at Sea Otter over the weekend the new Chris Cross gravel and cyclocross bike was unveiled.
The Chris Cross aims to tap into the growing gravel and adventure bike market.
“We built the new Chris Cross to be an incredibly versatile machine, equally capable of crushing your local CX race, tackling long summer gravel rides and bike packing trips, or fitting fenders for mixed terrain winter training,” explains the company.
It’s made and painted in the US using a blend of Columbus and Reynolds 853 tubing and there’s space for 700x40c or 650bx2.1in road and mountain bike wheels and tyres, providing the adaptability that a lot of people are looking for in this sort of bike.
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Fat Chance has developed its own modular down tube cable routing to provide compatibility with 1x and 2x drivetrains. The rear dropouts have two different aluminium inserts for use with or without mudguards.
The head tube is a tapered, 44 to 34mm, and there’s a 142x12mm rear thru-axle, 27.2mm seatpost, 68mm English Threaded bottom bracket and flat mount for the disc brakes. There are other details like oversized chainstays and to increase frame stiffness and curved seatstays to maximise tyre clearance.
The frame is available in three colours (Grello, Team Lavender, and AquaBlue) and three two colour fades (AquaFade, Chameleon Metallica, and Purple Sapphire) and there are four fork options: Ritchey WCS carbon fork, TRP Carbon, Yo CX fork or ENVE CX fork for clearance to run up to 650b x 2.1” MTB tires.
The frameset price is $2195.00 with the two colour fade paint jobs an extra $300. You can also pay extra for Chris King upgrade and colour matched Enve stem.
David has worked on the road.cc tech team since July 2012. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds.