bigwheel mountain bikes and new wheel sizes

[norman neville]

oddly enough, i've gotten some interesting offlist feedback regarding 700c/29r mountain bikes and their usefulness and benefits. it's true, i think fs 700c/29r is dumb, but for hardtails, it's great.

however, the big deal is, we _may_ be on the verge of having many many more tire and wheel size choices for both mountainbikes and allarounder-type road bikes. apparently, kirk pacenti is going to push his 650b mountainbike tires, and there are already plenty of 650b road tires again for some odd reason. we also have plenty of real 700c/29r mountain bike tires to go with boatload of 700c road tires. 26" is still goin' for both, too.

that's amazing to me. in a few years you will probably be able to optimize your wheel size on a hardtail mountainbike or allarounder road bike to your frame size. biguns get the 700c/29r; fence sitters get the 650b/27.5r; wee folks get 26r. that's quite a departure from those idiotic meter-long headtubes on early allarounder 26" wheel bikes or a 5' woman on a 700c/29r or road bike with huge wheels totally unsuited to her frame size. frame builders should be all sticky over this.

for road racing, too bad. in all frame sizes, you still need the standard wheel size and tubulars. cross, same thing. full-suspension downhill and trailriding, you're out too. standards apply. 24" is serious fun for ds and stupid stuff, but the tires are not suited to general riding and xc racing even if you're a gnome. arrow is keeping that going, i guess, and there could be more xc and rider-friendly rims and tires if lots of companies wanted to make super-small xc mountainbikes and allarounder road bikes.

soon, the future is now.

[Ginger]

All you need to do is educate the masses.

Framebuilders may be all sticky about this, but someone who rides a lot of stuff in the middle of BFE may not want to go with something that isn't available in a standard corner shop or big box store.

Just a thought.

[norman neville]

three diameters of tires and rims instead of two, but optimized bike fit and handling. why not? it will never happen if the big importers of chinese bikes don't get into it, but i-hate-to-say-it gp and rivendell have already done a decent job getting 650b back into the minds and onto the roads in this country. pacenti's mountain tires are key for the next phase, i think. we'll see.

[gdw]

The industry will jump on the bandwagon if they see it starting to take off. More choices means more sales. Whether the bigger tires are all they are hyped to be doesn't matter if the big boys feel it will increase their profits.

[Ginger]

Oh, I don't argue that it's a good thing to get some of these wheel sizes back into production. Nope, it's getting the cycling public to buy into it. It is starting to happen...but people don't want to be "strange" they want to be "cool."
So you have to get the market to buy in that these things are "cool" rather than strange...that's all.