World's fastest Karate Monkey

My long running fascination with the adaptability of the Surly Karate Monkey reared its head again recently and I made plans to revisit my earlier attempt at the unofficial Karate Monkey World Land Speed Record. The previous attempt resulted in a fairly pedestrian 35kmh average on a "sporting" course to use the parlance of the Time Trial crowd.

This time I was going to go all out and use my HED 3 trispoke (in honour of the late great Steve Hed), and my rear power-tap wheel with disc covers, that way I could use my power-tap for monitoring speed, (and power) plus it was easier to strap the PT harness on than going online to try and work out how to change the wheel diameter on my insufferable bike computer.

At the last minute the battery in my Power-tap hub died so I was going to have to race the time trial totally by feel. Not that that would be a problem. I've probably done more laps on the 5.9km Liverton road circuit than most people. Even so, I got a surprise when I glanced down at my watch to see that I had done the first lap in under 8mins 20 (which equates to about 42kmh). I had no idea what top speed I was doing with the 9kmh tail wind, but the 48-11 had me spinning a good cadence that was neither too high nor too slow. Just right, and proved to be a good governor to stop me blowing out my legs by pushing too tall a gear. I just needed to try and keep it together on the undulating return legs into the southerly.

I hadn't done a time trial for almost two years as I was injured the previous summer after the Kiwi Brevet and that particular pain that you get when TTing was like being reunited with an old friend. Pain is your friend.  I was very happy to come in at 4th place with an average of 41.4kmh, surely a new SURLY Karate Monkey land speed record?

What a cheeky monkey

The Iconic HED3 trispoke

 The next week I took my "proper" Bianchi time trial bike out and raced, knocking a massive 7 seconds off my Karate Monkey time over 23.4kms. Which goes to show, dedicated time-trial bikes are faster, but the aero position did some damage to my nether regions which took 3 days to come right. Speed has a cost! The Brooks saddle on my Karate Monkey was like an armchair by comparison.

My proper TT bike, the Bianchi D2 Chrono is a real chick magnet

I replaced the batteries in my Power-tap for the 2nd run on my dedicated TT bike and got an average of 276 watts. A long way from the 302 watts that I once maintained for a 45kmh average on my Bianchi (in good conditions). I'm keen to try it again on the Karate Monkey (with power) and see if the more relaxed position nets me more power, which in turn gets soaked up with the poorer aerodynamics. If I find that the power is similar, it would imply there are a lot of things I don't understand about aerodynamics.

Once again, it appears the Karate Monkey is the do-everything bike, although I believe that if you want the same bike today you have to buy the Ogre. The new Karate Monkey Ops loses the canti studs and bosses.

The day after the TT the Karate Monkey was back in commuter mode, and the next weekend was in full Dirt Brevet mode for an over-nighter with my wife. Try that on your Specialized Shiv !

Back in commuter mode

On the Rimutaka Cycle Trail

More Karate Monkey ravings here,  here, and here.

Contact me if your Karate Monkey is fast or faster and we will start a leader board.

If you think I might be in need of medication, check out this guy. He is the UK 12 and 24 hour Time Trial champ and his bike is a custom made MTB that he commutes and tours on.  It's so similar to my Karate Monkey I couldn't believe it when Andy Kerr sent me the link after my latest TT.

Andy Wilkinson's Dolan time trial bike >>

My favourite Monkey Song.

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Knard - WIZARD SPEAK KNOWLEDGE BOMB PUT THE TIRE DOWN AND PICK UP A BEER

Here are some first impressions of my new Knard 29+ 3 inch tire as fitted to my rigid Surly Karate Monkey. These tires are not supposed to be fitted on anything less than a 35mm wide rim, so the hell fires of damnation will likely rain down on me some time soon. The rim they are built to go with is the Rabbit-hole 50mm rim.

My rim is a Sun Ringle Equaliser. I have no idea how wide it is, but I am not someone who pushes the limits as far as bike handling goes, so hopefully the tire wont fall off. I have also run 2inch tires on Mavic Open Pro road rims with no problems, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I have seen elsewhere were people have mounted them to Stans Arch rims to give them a spin. There were certainly no issues with setting them up on my rim.

This bike is currently set up for this weekend's Single Speed nationals so I thought I'd sneak in a few rides to see how it felt. I started with only 11 psi in the front. Going was tough initially up Belmont Road Hill into a head wind with the low pressure but got better as I changed direction into a muddy cow-pocked climb up onto the Old Coach Road. Traction was great, the front didn't dig in, so the rear didn't slip under load. I wasn't expecting that.

I was really looking forward to the slippery rutted descent down the Maranatha Bridle track. I usually hate this track in the wet, but I was surprised to ride it with heaps more confidence than I normally would have on my 26er fully. I was impressed. The tire soaked up all the bumps and didn't once slide off the camber. If I could have fitted one on the back I would have been flying. Back on the tar-seal decent and the tire was inclined to steer very straight and not want to wander off line.

A seriously large tube

This morning I did a bit of reading and saw where most people seem to be running them at 19 to 21 psi, so I put in 20 psi and found it to be responding a lot more rapidly with side to side movements, like a normal tire. It felt similar to running a normal 29er tire with about 25 psi in it. Of course you miss out on a fair bit of the cushioning effect.

I haven't yet ridden up hill with the higher psi but I'm expecting it to roll a bit faster. There is no doubt its a very heavy tire; reported to be 1270 grams for the 27tpi wire bead version. The tube itself is massive and feels like it weighs about 300 grams. I would have weighed the tire but couldn't find anything big enough to contain it : )

Here is the most information I have found from a person currently using the Knard in its two versions.  The post is by Nurse Ben.

About to head down the slippery rutted Maranatha track

On the tar-seal

Racing Ralph on the back, Knard on the front

??????????

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Surly Karate Monkey second impressions

At Single Speed nationals with front 3.0 Knard

You may have read my Surly Karate Monkey first impressions here. Now I am a few months down the track I reckon its time to revisit and see what else I have discovered with longer term ownership.

I tend to think that the Karate Monkey is a tinkerers bike. I come from the generation of people that grew up working on their own cars and motorbikes, so its second nature to want to build their own bicycles. Especially if there are budgetary constraints. If you are the kind of person that buys a bike ready-made, and doesn’t enjoy messing with it, then the Karate Monkey may not be for you. Why? Because there are so many options for the person who enjoys getting their hands dirty. Building my own bikes is a big part of the enjoyment that I get out of cycling, and it helps with “mechanical empathy”. That link you have in knowing how what you assembled effects how your bike hangs together, sounds and feels. Some of my contraptions may not even look pretty, but they are my babies, and you never tell anyone their baby is ugly : )


The Karate Monkey was my first 29er, first drop-barred bike, and first rigid bike (since the late 80’s), so you have to bear that in mind when reading my findings. The reason I chose it was because of the many options it gave me. I wanted to try a 29er, and apparently the Karate Monkey was one of the very first out there. Canti mounts meant that I could build it up with old crap already lying around the shed, v-brakes, road wheels etc. In this first iteration it was a very capable Cyclo cross machine as it weighed in at a passable 24 pounds. (CX images from Craig Madsen).

For the second build iteration of the Karate Monkey I picked up some cheap wheels, complete with new tires and discs off trademe. With the addition of mechanical discs it rocketed up to around 28 pounds. The discs certainly took some getting used to. There is none of the progressiveness associated with hydraulic discs - they are on or they are off. On the trails of the Wainuiomata Trail Park the Karate Monkey was great. It climbed awesomely and descended with confidence. At no time did I think I would have been better off with a flat bar. In fact, I suspect the drop bars may even have a little bit of suspension built in, they certainly feel that way. Unfortunately I mis-read the course signage in the race I was doing there, did an extra lap and dropped from 2nd to about 8th in my class by the races end.


One thing you will notice with drop bars, you can be a bit limited with braking set-ups. If you go with road levers you will need to get the appropriate discs for them. I had some special road levers that had normal MTB-style-pull so went with standard MTB discs. If I wanted to go from the bar-end shifters to STI levers, I would have to get one of these : http://problemsolversbike.com/products/travel_agents/ or change to the road specific calipers. This is starting to sound more like its about drop bars than it is the Karate Monkey. I will try to keep on track.

There are many strange things about the Karate Monkey. It is the swiss-army-knife of bicycles, so in many ways it is a compromise. It can take very fat tires, but there is little clearance for your front derailleur or derailleur cable so you might have to use the “monkey-nuts” which push the wheel more rearward in the horizontal drop-outs to give better clearance up front. This in turn would negate the whole idea of having a bent seat tube which is presumably to allow the wheel to be closer to front for that legendary Karate Monkey cornering.  Of course if you go single speed its not an issue. My widest rear tires have only been 2.0 inches so I haven’t had any issues at all. Personally I hate the horizontal drop-outs which are a bit of pain when installing the rear wheel, but apparently a big improvement on previous models. At least now you don’t have to unbolt the disc calipers to change the wheel!


Something which I think is a real mistake on the latest Karate Monkey is the dropping of the canti bosses. They really gave you a lot more options. Mine is the 16 inch model. I was concerned that the 18 inch, with drop bars would be too long for me. With the 16, its great, but if I throw a normal flat bar on it, it feels a bit short. Bear this in mind when choosing frame sizes. I did a lot of research online for sizing, it did not help. An 18 with a shorter stem may well have done the job even better. Typically when using a drop-bar you are extending your cock-pit length a fair bit so you need a shorter top-tube or a shorter stem.
Some of the cable routing is not that great with the 16 inch frame, the bottom triangle (because of that silly little gusset) is only 13.5 inches tall. Presumably it’s for a better standover height. This does not leave much room to braze on a derailleur cable stop, hence you have crazy loops of cable sticking up above the top tube, and a very steep exit angle on your cable. Once again, not a problem if you are running it singlespeed.


There is only the one cable stop on the Monkey which is intended to use continuous cabling. I am not sure what I think about this. I am getting used to it, should improve cable life in theory.


I wasn’t really expecting to say anything good about a 2 and half pound steel rigid fork. I was wrong. It goes exactly where you point it. There is a lot of confidence to be gained from knowing that your wheel will go where you want it to, and it wont in fact wallow down the side of a rut and spit you off. As I said, I haven’t ridden a rigid fork since the late 80’s, but I cant help but think that the 29 inch wheels make it less of an issue. 

A good example of the merits of the wagon wheels came to me the other day when riding the river bank section of the Crazyman ride. There are a series of man made speed humps. When you hit them on the 29er, you just launch off them. When I hit them on my 26er, they really knock my speed back.

In really tight single track the karate Monkey’s geometry is amazing. It even turns better than my Santa  Superlight which is my best handling bike to date. That's with the drop bars on. I haven’t ridden it that much with the flat bar on, although I can say unequivocally, the drop bar is better for long descents as you only really have to brake, and not brake AND grip the bar simultaneously. Gravity and the shape of the bar means you can relax your grip and your hand wont slip off, or get arm pump to the same extent. This is one of the main benefits of a drop bar. There I go again. 

So what else have I found out? Its the only bike Ive ever had to use a proper head-set tool on. It was a tight fit. Luckily Marco had one in his garage. The bottom bracket shell is 73mm wide and I am using a 113mm wide spindled square taper BB on it, like most of my BB’s.

More things, not necessarily to do with the Monkey, but more the 29er format.
1. You can run MTB tires on Mavic Open pro road rims.
2. You can run road tires on 29er MTB rims.
3. If you flat, a 26 tube will fit a 29er tire no problem with a bit of care.

I have had a lot of fun with this Bike. It handles really well, its very robust, cheap and adaptable. I will probably ride it a bit more with the flat bar on, then put the drops back on, then do some big day trips on it, then maybe turn it into a singlespeed for a while.  I am interested to see how the drop bars cope with the big leverage efforts you get when SSIng. The “on the hoods” position on my current Woodchipper bar gives excellent leverage for in the saddle efforts anyway.


At around 5 and a half pounds for the frame, this is indicative of the many steel hard tails that are turning up on the market. Cheap and robust, and heavier than a lot of fullies. But if you are not suffering from weight weenerism and you like messing with your own bike, then the Karate Monkey promises hours of fun!

Other links. Worlds fastest Monkey. 

Karate Monkey First Impressions.

http://surlybikes.com/bikes/karate_monkey 

monkey with KNARD !

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Karate Monkey Landspeed Record attempt

In my bid to build the fastest Karate Monkey on the planet I have a way to go. My second attempt at wind tunnel testing on the Rimutaka incline proved problematic as a southerly came through. I was in danger of getting hypothermia in the actual tunnel as the wind tried to wrestle the 2nd rain jacket I was trying to put on from my grip.

It's at this time of the year (spring) that the weather is always at its worst. Winter is a doddle in Wellington. It's always mild and mostly dry and most of the time you don't even have to wear gloves. Ok, it snowed this year. But that has never happened before. Spring sucks. I am getting probably 1 dry ride out of 3, and the trails are a mess.

The first speed enhancement I tried was my home brewed aero-bars, followed by a reverse slammed riser stem, the Freeload rack speed-pod, then the Wheelbuilder.com wheel covers (disc wheel emulator). A 46 tooth big ring helps too.

Room for an expresso pot, tools and spare shorts. 

Wind tunnel testing is all very well, but its on the race track where you see if all the hours of computer modelling you have been doing pays off. Unfortunately the disc cover caused a slight rubbing on the brake caliper, so I had to eliminate it from the test. I could have run my tri-spoke on the front, but that would have meant putting the v-brakes back on. Too hard.

The race was on what the UK Time Trial testers would call a "sportsmans" course, a winding 22kms in the country with lots of the nasty coarse 3/4 chip that we specialise in here in NZ. You can tell it was slow when the fastest time was a  41kmh on a hi-end TT rig. We got hammered with a rain squall coming through as well.

The best I could manage was 35kmh in 37.25 mins. Pretty pathetic, but with 32 spokes smashing into the wind, Armadillo tires and very wide handlebars I guess I shouldn't have expected too much. I did sit on 54kmh for a bit on the wednesday worlds ride early that week, but then I also went out the back some time shortly afterwards : )

The fat tires are back on now. But if anyone else wants to have a crack, we can start with the Karate Monkey World Landspeed record at 35kmh for 20 kms. All results must be verified.

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Drop it like its hot !

The Karate Monkey is getting close to being a final build with the addition of some MTB wheels - brand new, complete with new Racing Ralphs for $285 off tardme!

Some Avid BB7s disc brakes (mtb version) complete the package. All of this has bumped the weight up by about 3 pounds to about 27.5 pounds over the v-braked road-wheeled iteration I was using at the CX's. The CX tires will be back on for this weekend hopefully.































It got a good hammering at Wainui Trail Park last weekend. The drop bars were great, but the rear brake was almost unusable they were skidding so much. I know that the Racing Ralphs roll incredibley well on the road, so a bit of the skidding could be caused by them, but I think I basically had the Avid BB7's set up too well. I backed off the inside pad a few turns when I got home. Hopefully it will make them less vicious as the outside pad will have to drag the disc over to the inside which should knock back the efficiency a bit.

I am really liking the Woodchipper drop-bars. I cut 2 inches off each side last week so now I can at least get them into the shed without snagging bottles of turps and paint brushes all over the show.

The position of your hands when riding these off-road is such that its like hanging onto a big set of bar-ends. You can get massive amounts of power through them, which is handy, because with bar-end shifters, I am not going to be changing gears as often as I would if I had an STI road shifter on the front right.

There are several reasons for this choice of shifters. You need a different set of BB7s for road pull levers (mine are special ones that pull the normal MTB amount) and I am using them in friction mode as I would be surprised if STI would work with my circuitous cable routing : )

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Karate Monkey first impressions

I went for the first ride on my new "frame" on thursday. I still hadn't recovered fully from the cold that I have had for the last week so it was a gentle up and down of the Danzig and Big Weta tracks in Belmont Regional Park, about 8 minutes of descending and 16 minutes of leisurely climbing.

The Surly Karate Monkey is a pretty bizarre looking machine and is well known for its utilitarian design. If Batman had a bike on his utility belt, it would be this one... if you could take only one bike onto a desert island, then you would take the Karate Monkey... or so the legend goes. It is adorned with all kinds of welded on attachments (except cable stops) which enable it to be used in many different roles.

Apologies for the crappy Tablet photos.

Its a 29er, with canti studs so can be used as a Cyclo Cross Bike, a Cross Country bike (can take a suspension fork and discs) a Single Speed (has horizontal drop-outs) and a touring bike (has mounts for racks and mudguards). So that's effectively four other bikes I don't need now... which is just as well, because I had to disable at least three of them just to get together enough parts to make this one go!!

I had to borrow the rear v-brakes off my single speed, the front v-brakes off my Franken-cross bike, the Woodchipper handlebar and old road-wheels off same, and the right-hand shifter off my Time trial bike !

Cleetus gave me his ex-Kiwi-Brevet 42mm conti-cross tire for the front and I picked up a cheap 38mm CX tire for the rear.

Aside from having no front suspension and very narrow tires my initial descent of Danzig and Big Weta went well. There was a fair bit of jarring but nothing I couldn't handle, a big fat tire on the front would give me a completely different ride. I cant wait. What impressed me most was the nimbleness of the bike, it just dropped into the many Danzig "zig-zags" beautifully. Maybe it was the short chain-stays tucked in close to the bent seat post, reminds me of he old Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo? Surprisingly it felt way more nimble than my Santa Cruz Superlight which is the bike I ride down there the most. Not what I would have expected from a 29er, although the thin tires may have had a big effect on its lively feel.

The frame layout is very strange to look at, and I did a lot of comparing of "effective top-tubes" before I ordered this size - the 16 inch. The actual measurement from BB to the bottom side of the top-tube is only 13.5 inches, but to the top side is 16. The actual "effective top-tube" length is longer than many other "medium" sized bikes at 576 mm, or 22.7 inches.

My plan was always to use this as a drop-bar bike which tends to put your arms more forward than a flat-bar anyway. I do have short legs and a long torso (5ft 10 - very monkey-like; ) and so far the fit feels really good. The amount of actual seat-post sticking out is surprisingly identical to my Superlight, even though it looks crazy. It looks like the top-tube almost slopes directly into the rear chain-stays on the 16inch frame !

The Woodchipper drop-bars are amazingly good. They feel really safe, because of the way your hands just fall into them, but I have to wonder what would happen in an off - would your legs get all tangled up behind the things ? The bars do offer quite a few different positions and what I found really interesting was how natural they felt when climbing. With the hands on the hoods position they had a very similar feel to what you get from riding on bar-ends on a flat-bar equipped XC bike. I have the top of the bar set up about parallel to the top of the seat, but ideally they are supposed to be quite a bit higher than that for proper control while riding on the drops off road.

It will be in the Cyclo cross/Commuter format for quite a while I think, because to run fatter tires I will need wider rims, and if I am going to do that I might as well get rims that have braking surfaces AND disc ready hubs while I am at it. No sense in having two sets of wheels when you are cheap.

The current brake/shifting set-up is very basic but comfortable, Diacompe road levers with special pull for v-brakes. I have done my time with normal canti's and ain't going back!

If I ever go to STI styled shifters I would probably go for an SLX 10 speed rear cluster, that way I could have a 34 rear, meaning potentially less chain-rings needed up front.

Surprisingly in this current build it only weighs in at 23.5 pounds. With a steel 4130 frame at about 5.5 pounds and a 2.6 pound fork it was never going to be a light-weight. Anyway, as you know, steel is real, real heavy and real cheap so I am really looking forward to getting over this lurgi so I can get out for a really decent ride !!!

Some relevant links
Baby monkey - riding on a pig going backwards.....
http://www.surlybikes.com/frames/karate_monkey_frame/
http://www.tomac.com/john-tomac.php

Phoo! Google is your friend, I found you can actually run 29er tires on road rims, it's just not recommended! I will try out this 1.9 Kenda Kharma. The Rim is an old 36 hole Mavic Open Pro with a Durace hub. I am pretty sure the wheel, or the hub was once my workmate Sam Raphel's.

A few more observations.
For some reason the front cantis only have holes for one position of the v-brake spring while the rear studs have three. It means I cant get the brakes snapping back into position how I'd like. The seat-tube is also so rediculously short that there is hardly any room to mount the front derailler cable-stop without it potentially fouling an incredibley fat wheel (if it was used) hence negating the pretty bent seat-tube design - hence the cable angle is pretty gnarly. Usually when I assemble a bike I can tap the head-set in with a piece of wood and rubber mallet. Not this one. I gave up and used a proper tool that required %*&^-loads of torque on it to force the head-set in. The BB went in easily with no extra preparation.

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