278-282 Mitchell Rd, Alexandria NSW 2015
(02) 8014 4228
Contact Us
Article: New Surly Straggler
New Surly Straggler
''After more that a decade remaining pretty much unchanged except for a bunch of awesome colours (hands up if you remember Glitter Dreams!) Straggler gets an update. Read on for the Why and a bunch of details about this awesome new bike from Surly....
Just like in the olden days when we had the road oriented Pacer and the dirt favouring Cross Check in our range, Midnight Special and Straggler were supposed to live side by side like this. Covid put a massive spanner in these works and while Midnight Special entered the arena, a Straggler update was delayed a little longer than we' d hoped. But it's here now!
With a longer wheelbase and taller headtube, the Straggler is designed to be the stable, comfortable and forgiving gravel oriented bike in our range. It's now 2025 (wow, that went fast!) and so Straggler comes packed with load of modern features, including but not limited to....
-
44m headtube. Run the standard fork, or a carbon fork, or maybe a short travel gravel suspension for. Basically whatever fork you like. Have more than one fork, switch em around!
-
Thru axles front and rear. This just makes sense and gives you enormous choice in hub options at all kinds of budgets.
-
Flat mount brakes. Run pretty much whatever modern brake you want from basic to bling.
-
Dropper post routing. Because droppers are fun as hell, but also nice for getting on and off your bike.
-
Big tyre clearance. 50mm will fit easy, bigger probably works too.
New Straggler also has a more sloped top tube to better fit a wide range of humans and of course has all manner of mounts for racks, fenders, cages, whatever else you feel like bolting on. As has always been the case, the smaller sized Stragglers are designed around 650b wheels, and the bigger ones around 700c. 
Straggler has always been that very versatile option - commute, ride or 'race' gravel, go bikepacking or loaded touring. Basically ride that thing wherever you like and have a great time. The bikes are now in stock in both a very rad Subtropic Algae Green GRX 2x Spec and a Shaggy Carpet Orange Cues 1x Spec.
New Straggler takes this to another level and we're sure you're gonna love it. Go chuck a leg over one at Omafiets and let us know what you think!
And as a side note we know that some of you are really just here to find out about the biggest tyre size you can fit on a Surly Straggler. Surly has long been known for its "Fatties Fit Fine" philosophy and tends to design bikes with big clearance and a bit of wriggle room on even their recommended maximum sizes. The official biggest tyre size as far as Surly is concerned is 700x50mm (otherwise known as 29x2.0) for the frame sizes 54-64 and 650bx50 (otherwise known as 27.5x2.0) for frame sizes 46-52cm.
Now the reality is that you can run bigger tyres than that, but precisely how big will depend on the particular tyre (not all tyre sizes are accurate, some size up bigger or smaller than their stated size) and your rim width (a wider rim tends to make a tyre balloon out wider than the same tyre on a narrow rim)
Now as soon as we received our bikes we went to see how much further we can go and we managed to fit a set of 29x2.2 Teravail Sparwood tyres on a set of relatively narrow 19mm wide internal Hunt Gravel wheels. Bear in mind thats a pretty low knob height, fast rolling tyre. We then tried a set of Maxxis Ikon 29x2.2 tyres on the same rims and while it clears with a few mms it's definitely closer than we would recommend for general riding.
If you are playing around with wider rims, then you are going to want to size down from that, the stock GRX Spec bike runs 25mm wide internal WTB Rims, and the stock Cues Spec bike runs 21mm internal Alex Adventurer2 Rims. So the above Teravail Sparwood would likely just sneak in, and the knobbler Maxxis Ikon would be out of the question.
Different tyre and rim options will obviously give different results but a we feel confident in saying experiment with up to a 2.1 but be cautious about tyres with more aggressive tread profiles. We will update this as we experiment with more combinations, or let us know whats worked for you !
