Fat City Cycles

Chris Chance began building frames in 1977, and built his first mountain bike frame in 1982, the "Fat Chance". The first to produce mountain bike on the east coast, Chris got financial support from his wife Wendyll's family to start Fat City Cycles, an American bicycle manufacturing company in 1982. Fat City Cycles became one of the most innovative builders of fine steel mountain bikes in the sport.[1] Chris Chance is a master framebuilder from the Eisentraut school, Fat City Cycles grew to include a large, highly skilled, creative crew of extremely talented artists.

Fat City Cycles
IndustryBicycles
FateBought by a Holding Company and Closed
SuccessorIndependent Fabrication
Founded1982 (1982)
Defunct1999 (1999)
HeadquartersSomerville, Massachusetts
Key people
Chris Chance
ProductsMountain, Cyclocross and Road Bicycles

Notable firsts:

Tig welding: While maintaining a clean, straightforward design sensibility, Fat City also pioneered many firsts notable in the sport. At a time when high end bike frames were all fillet brazed, Chris Chance and Gary Helfrich sought to eliminate the excess weight of large brass fillets, and worked out the process of Tig welding the thinwall tubing while mitigating the loss of strength in the Heat Affected Zone around each weld. This resulted in lighter frames, and a reputation for having welds so small (compared to fillet brazed junctions) they were referred to as "micro-welds". When traditionalists balked at the unfinished look of bare tig welds, Chris and Gary stuck by their choice of weldment, but also did a partial, cosmetic brazing job on top the tig welds to appease critics, resulting in a handful of the earliest tig-welded mountain bikes having a mix of brazing giving way to welding on a single junction. Within a year or two, the entire sport came around, and Tig welding became the standard method of welding metal frames industry-wide.

Performance selected tubing: Unlike manufacturers product lines whose model differentiation was set by price and quality, the different models of Fat City bikes were all premium frames, but each was designed and built for different ride characteristics, with different ride geometry and different diameter tubing and wall thicknesses to tailor the ride qualities to the intended style of riding. A Wicked got slimmer, thinner tubing, for a fun but springier ride, whereas the workhorse Yo Eddy got larger and thicker tubing, for going out racing and really thrashing on. Monster Fat had heavy duty tubing and a stout rear wishbone stay configuration. There were models tailor made to be best for cruising, for playing, and for racing, for bigger and heavier riders as well as for shorter and lighter riders. In addition, any model could be ordered with customized details.

Titanium: Chris and Gary Helfrich both wanted to pursue titanium building early on, but in the process of producing a prototype, Chris calculated how much it would cost to do right, and realized he couldn't afford to do it. Gary dug in, found funding, and started Merlin Titanium in the building across the parking lot, where the modern Titanium frame was born and matured into what it is today. After a couple more years, Chris got his opportunity, and after investing a year of his welders working out the thinwall titanium welding process, introduced the Fat Chance Titanium. Though there was no such thing as butted titanium tubing at the time, Chris was determined, and worked out a welded-sleeve method of joinery to increase the effective wall thickness near the high stress ends of each tube. After two years of this, Fat City bought a centerless grinder, and starting with thickwall tubing, ground the outer diameters down along the middle of each tube, effectively making their own light, strong butted titanium tubing. Within a couple years, demand from other titanium builders persuaded titanium suppliers to offer stock butted tubesets.

Other notable projects include the original Box Crown fork (before there was such a thing as a unicrown fork to clear a mtb tire), Yo Eddy Fork, and B1 (Big One Inch) fork, the first Womens specific mtb frame, the pinnacle of steel mountain bike frames, the "Tenth Anniversary" from 1992, and the artwork of Mike Poppaconstantine that put a colorful, wild, and fun face on the sport.

The family tree of Fat City Cycles includes countless spinoff companies industry-wide, including much of the high-end titanium and steel building community that followed its eventual dissolution.

Fat City Cycles closed its doors in Somerville in October 1994, when it was sold to a holding company which had acquired another bike company (Serotta). When the holding company moved Fat City from Somerville, Massachusetts, to South Glens Falls, New York, at the same time that Merlin was shut down overnight, the employees of both companies recombined in various groups and went on to start Independent Fabrication, Seven, Vicious, Iglehart, and a dozens other independent builders.[2]


Fans and enthusiasts of the now-defunct Fat City Cycles and Fat Chance bicycles from around the world now share their bikes, stories and love of the brand at the web site Fat Cogs,[3] or the Fat Chance Owners Group — the club of Fat fans everywhere.

The most famous model that came from Fat City Cycles was without doubt the cult Yo Eddy. The Yo as it is often referred to is one of the most iconic and collectable mountain bikes of the early 1990s. The famous Team Violet 1991 and 1992 versions with matching rigid "Yo Eddy" forks are often the most desirable and are often built with Ringle, Grafton, Bullseye, Syncros and RockShox parts. Owning a Yo is the pinnacle for most vintage mountain bike collectors and the value of these bikes in recent years has seen a significant rise.

After twenty years off, Chris Chance has set up shop on the west coast, building small numbers of premium custom modern frames for Fat Chance devotees.

Models

Below is a list of some of the bicycles that Fat City Cycles offered.

ModelIntroducedDiscontinuedMaterialType of
bike		Sizes
Fat Chance[4] Cro-mo steel Mountain bike
Fat Chance with 24" Rear Wheel[5] Mountain bike
Team Comp [6] Mountain bike
Monster Fat[7] 1991 1993 Cro-mo steel Mountain bike
Slim Chance[8] Cro-mo steel Road bike
Shock A Billy Full[9] 1994 Cro-mo steel Full suspension
mountain bike
Yo Eddy 1991 1999 Cro-mo steel Mountain bike
Titanium 1993 1999 Titanium Mountain bike
Yo Betty Cro-mo steel Mountain bike
Buck Shaver 1994 Cro-mo steel Mountain bike
Wicked Fat Chance 1987 Cro-mo steel Mountain bike
Fat F*ck'n Chance
Bro Eddy
Flaming Sea Cycles 1980
Random Tandem Tandem Mountain Bike
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References
  1. The Mountain Bike Hall of Fame - Hall of Fame Inductees
  2. "Independent Fabrication". Archived from the original on 2008-07-23. Retrieved 2008-07-07.
  3. http://www.FatCogs.com
  4. 1983 Fat Chance
  5. 1987 Fat Chance w/ 24" rear wheel
  7. 1991 Monster Fat
  8. 1992 Slim Chance
  9. 1994 Fat Chance Shock A Billy


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