Originally Posted by
Abu Mahendra
A Soma Wolverine, for example, is a long-existing alternative. And it can probably take even wider tires, and it takes QR and 68mm BB.
Soma had a blog post about converting their bikes to 650b and claimed the wolverine doesn’t get much of an increase in clearance going from 700c to 650b (still around 2”). Not sure why that is, but on my 700c AWOL, the chainstays are significantly dimpled to accommodate a wider tire, but that dimple is optimized at the diameter of a 700c rim. You can tell that at a certain smaller diameter, the clearance between the chainstays would probably be the same or even slightly less...the chainstays run almost parallel to each other from the tire until about halfway to the wheel hub.
Both the surly/all city bikes are able to run 2.35s, which is a very common MTB width with tons of options. Now that we are also seeing a lot of wide 27.5 slick/micronob/file tread tires in comparable widths that would do great on road and gravel, I think this makes for a very versatile bike.