Bike of the Week: Troy’s Fat Chance

This Bike of the Week is a bona fide winner: the Buck Shaver from Fat City Cycles. This particular Buck Shaver belongs to NYC Velo team member Troy O, who’s currently tackling the MTB scene in Copenhagen, Denmark on his classic “Fat”.

The Buck Shaver is a mountain bike from Fat City Cycles, a less expensive version of the fancier Fat Chance models, a “budget” handmade machine. Budget as it is, the Buck Shaver still has all the attention to detail of the more expensive bikes but used less expensive materials and a simpler mono-stay rear end. Troy’s Buck Shaver was made in the fames Fat City Cycles Sommerville, MA workshop, before Fat City Cycles was sold to the investors who owned Serotta Competition Bicycles at the time (Serotta has since changed hands a few times). The Buck Shaver was made from 1994 to 1996 and it is rumored to be a replacement for the Monster Fat Chance and was eventually changed to the “Bro Eddy”.

The model name Buck Shaver was a nickname for a Fat City employee named Pat Egan (he used to race in a bowling shirt with “Buck Shaver” embroidered on it) who was, according to old Fat City catalogues, “always on the look out for a good deal”. The Buck Shaver frame was named for him as a tribute after he passed away in 1992. The Buck Shaver has the same geometry and dimensions as the Yo Eddy but, according to longtime Fat City and Independent Fabrication employee Lloyd Graves, it utilized AVR top and down tubes and an MHT head tube, as well as a wishbone seatstay that took longer to make than the traditional seatstays found on the higher end “Fats”. I don’t know what those tube designations mean, but they sound great and support the notion that this frame is basically a entry level, handmade frame made of stock materials and lotsa soul.

Troy and I, as part of the NYC Velo MTB Team, raced our (almost) matching Buck Shavers for a while “back in the day” — in this case back in day means 2005 or so — to modest amounts of success. Unfortunately, low race finishes were never the bikes’ fault…

We’re huge Fat City fans here at NYC Velo and look to bring our readers more “Fat” bikes in the future. Until then, enjoy Troy’s: