I'd be all over this deal if I hadn't bought 2 bikes and a frame within the past 30 days. I wanted a Farley when I bought my Crestones. Is Trek direct to consumers now, or does everything still go to a dealer?

 

The option I have is to ship it to a dealer.

 

I was seriously looking at this, but specs show 80mm fork travel is the max?
Pretty big deal killer for me. Seems strange that the minimum amount of fork travel available is the max for this frame.
Maybe some of the reason for the huge sale as their specs don’t seem to match their marketing about it being a trail bike first

 

I didn’t see that. That does seem on the short side (I would have assumed that 100mm would work).

 

I would like to think so, but Trek clearly says the max fork length is 492 (80mm travel). And while 100mm would be better, I wouldn’t consider that “trail bike” territory.

 

Joe Dirt is right. That’s a pretty big matzah ball hanging out there. Moments earlier, I was giving trek serious consideration.

 

After doing a warranty on my 2020 Farley 9.6 frame and moving to a 2023 9.6, I dumped the 2020 9.6 parts on the AL/older 5 frame. Nice, but the carbon feels waaaaaaaay better.

That current Farley 5 has the ugliest $h!t paint job ever put on a bike. 💩🤮 The older AL looks nasty in the photos, it was a huge relief pulling it out of the box that the blues are so much better in real life.

The Farley 7 looks nice, but it's a heavy pig, near Surly Ice Cream Truck weight. My three fatties all run carbon forks, never found a reason to put a boat anchor out front.

 

After doing a warranty on my 2020 Farley 9.6 frame and moving to a 2023 9.6, I dumped the 2020 9.6 parts on the AL/older 5 frame. Nice, but the carbon feels waaaaaaaay better.

That current Farley 5 has the ugliest $h!t paint job ever put on a bike. 💩🤮 The older AL looks nasty in the photos, it was a huge relief pulling it out of the box that the blues are so much better in real life.

The Farley 7 looks nice, but it's a heavy pig, near Surly Ice Cream Truck weight. My three fatties all run carbon forks, never found a reason to put a boat anchor out front.

My guess is that the average person with a fat bike has no need for one, as they’re going to have a dedicated trail bike for single-track.

My ICT sees more single-track miles (rocks, roots, etc.) than snow, so it makes sense for my use case.

If it snowed more in my area, I’d build a second fat bike without a suspension fork exclusivel

 

The AL frameset has been on sale for $700 for awhile now. I figured if Trek has been sitting on them for months at that price, and they are still in stock in all sizes, it probably won't be long before they get dumped somewhere else even cheaper.