[Closed] Is 26er gear really worth peanuts nowadays?

Surely you could just run 27.5 forks at a push? Or are they also tricky to get in straight steerer?

EVERY new bike above a few hundred quid already had a tapered head tube when 27.5 became a standard, so aftermarket straight steerer forks are rare as rocking horse shit regardless of the wheel size.

But in theory, yes, you'll just have approx 10-12mm taller A2C height for a given travel (or you can compensate by running 10mm shorter travel than you would on a 26" fork).

uess which letter isnt workin on keyboard

The apostrophe?

I feel so ashamed that I managed to deceive myself all those years riding down the Beast in the Peak, Parkamoor to Nibthwaite at Coniston, CyB etc. that I was enjoying myself.
Only now can I admit to myself that I was only pretending.
Thank goodness the selfless bike manufacturers have forsaken all their profits for a few years in order to bring us proper sized wheels.

Quality stuff still sells well. I sold a rigid single speed 26 lat last year and got almost £600 for it.
Gone back to fixed gear track bike as I only ride gravel/road Now that is something that really has gone out of fashion (picked up a mint 1994 531c frameset for just over £100) so now enjoying the prices I paid for track stuff when I started riding them in 2001.

As with previous discussion on 26", the real change was fork steerer going to tapered and nothing to do with 26" wheels. Just happens that the 26" wheel frames are old and tend to have straight steerers.

If 27.5 had never happened all the 'progress' (geometry, forks, hub sizes, 1X) would have just happened on 26.

- mikewsmith Member

When did a mag tell you to stop?

Constantly, and without exception from the second they were informed by the manufacturers of the impending arrival of 650b.

Lost all respect for the MTB media.

I have little respect for those riders who immediately swallowed the koolaid either.
Being a mindless consumerist shill is not an attractive character trait.

On geometry though I haven't paid that much attention to 650b bikes but the bigger-slacker-longer thing is definitely making a difference to bikes. It could have been done with 26

I can't tell the difference between my suppressor and a patrol.

I've not noticed the price of 26 parts (forks, wheels, tyres) being any cheaper.

I reckon £600 is very good since I would've expected anyone with that sort of cash for wheels to have [s]upgraded[/s] bought into the marketing hype.

I have little respect for those riders who immediately swallowed the koolaid either.
Being a mindless consumerist shill is not an attractive character trait.

I recently bought a 2017 Genesis Longitude F and F, this was a perfect way of shifting most of my 26" parts onto a newer more up to date frame.
QR front and rear, 1 1/8 headset, normal bottom bracket, 27.2 seatpost, brakes are the same, just built it up 27.5plus and 2x11, but I could have just as easily shifted the drivetrain over but it was 3x9 and pretty worn out.
OK so it doesn't have suspension, but it is way nicer than the Gary Fisher the bits came off.
I will probably pick up a set of old wheels with nice hubs and build some 29" commuter wheels.
Bars, stems and seats haven't changed much.

I've got one of the last 26" Fives. If it were worth anything I'd have to sell it since I hardly ever ride it. But since it's worth peanuts I can justify just leaving it in the shed and taking it out a couple of times a year for a laugh. So, the price crash suits me 🙂

But in theory, yes, you'll just have approx 10-12mm taller A2C height for a given travel (or you can compensate by running 10mm shorter travel than you would on a 26" fork

I did this, I've a 150mm travel 650b fork on my HT which has the same A2C as a 26" 160mm Pike. Loads of clearance and options to either go 26" or 650b on my next frame

I'm keeping a beady eye out for a 26" FS frame, but all the ones that keep appearing are mediums and i need a large (well actually i need to buy a car first but I know what I'd rather have)

I've a shed full of 26" wheels and tyres (and a few forks).

At some point I'll cut the spokes and bin the rims (even though one wheelset was never ridden due to injuries!) as I tried to sell them not so long ago and couldn't even get any interest at the value of the hubs!

The lighter XC stuff I'll store in the loft until I've got kids old enough to use it, SWMBO has a very nice Dialled bikes holeshot '4X' bike that she never uses, but is pointless selling. The tyre mountain I had one cull of, but it's stil there, so I might go for one more round. The DH tyres I'll probably keep because if I ever get another DH bike it'll be an unfashionable old one for holidays/BPW/Antur only.

Much as I like hoarding and a bargain, it's just not worth the space having a 10 year supply of tyres and wheels!

tinas - if you're going to sell the hubs on and they're standard 100/135 QR I'd do it sooner rather than later - another dying standard...

Straight steerer forks aren't cheap second hand.

Don't give up too soon. A few weeks ago I sold sole Roval 26er wheels on eBay for 170.
I have a really nice carbon Merida 26er which is going to be turned into a single speed town hack. it would fetch so little and the cost of a steel single speed so high that it's just not worth selling ( and it would be lighter etc )

So I've got an old Kona (98) with v-brakes.
If I had a budget of around £80, what could I get?
And would they be any better than what's already on it (Mavic X138)?

tinas - if you're going to sell the hubs on and they're standard 100/135 QR I'd do it sooner rather than later - another dying standard...

Naaa, I've got a wishlist of bikes to build in the next few years, and they're all QR and 135mm so it'll never be a problem.

Genesis Vagabond (135 and 100 QR)
On-One Pickenflick (135 and 100 QR)
Last FastForward (135mm QR)
Light hardtail for XC (there'll be a QR choice at least)

So that's a bike a year for the next 4 years or so without compromising.

I'm quite happy to let standards come and go, if I was to buy a new FS trail bike then I'd have to buy new forks anyway, BB's and headsets are almost always going to need to be new, so that leaves wheels of which I probably have a set that fits, and if not rims are consumable and hubs aren't that expensive in the scheme of things and I can build my own.

I had a similar conversation along the lines of this thread with my father. He has a really nice KHS hardtail which he has upgraded a few parts on (bars, contact points, mix of XX1 / X9 in 1x10, SLX brakes) but has been slowly being 'convinced' that what he really needs is a rigid plus bike.

I'm trying to counter the conviction with 'ride and enjoy what you have got'.

Not sure he will listen to someone who just bought a 29er with old school geometry and a skinny seatpost though 😆

I'm quite happy to let standards come and go

My rigid 26" BFe is as obsolete as they come now though- 135mm QR rear, straight steerer and Identiti Rebate 20mm dirt jump forks. It has a certain heft but I'll never wear the frame or forks out!

I think you can still get good prices for 26" stuff. As always you need to put a bit of effort into descriptions and pictures and then obviously put them on eBay rather than somewhere like here where "26 is worthless" gets bandied around.

In the last couple of months I've been splitting my 26" bike and the prices I've been getting have been OK, eg;

- pair 26" Flow EX on Hope Pro 2 Evo's - £230
- 26" Pikes in unfashionable white + dual position guise - £268
- 26" 2009 Lapierre Zesty frame - £280

My commuting bike has 26" hope pro2 hubs, butted spokes and DT xr400 rims. £160 off ebay. 🙂

The problem with eBay is, of course, fees and splitting means faff and multiple postage charges. I guess it's trying to determine which has the best return.

Road bikes going same way with discs, and the problem with being an early adopter is backing the wrong horse.

Enigma are selling their Evoke disc frame bundle reduced. Because it has q/r and post mount brakes. The industry now appears to be going flat mount and bolt-through, so all those who jumped on discs last year will find new brakes and factory wheelsets as easy to buy as straight steerer sus forks in a year or two (flat mount not reverse compatible, obviously).

Luckily my straight steerer 26" sus fork is a marzocchi RC3Ti and will probably out last me.

Glad my 26" bike has tapered headtube, stealth dropper routing and a sensible sized seattube.

My pickenflick is a qr 100/135. I saw that as a positive and the qr's don't make any difference to flex etc.

I must count my peanuts and pay more attention to the classifieds.

Road bikes going same way with discs, and the problem with being an early adopter is backing the wrong horse.

This too, "Road Plus" is/was an attempt at this last year, Shimano's flat mount disc calliper standard and their still faffing between QR/12mm/15mm axle standards on disc braked road bikes, the goal is clearly to prevent migration of parts between Road/MTB/Gravel markets...

the bicycle industry as a whole has, up until recently, not made much effort to place technical barriers between the various market segments, they'll be doing it much more from here on.

I'm less annoyed by 27.5" TBH, on it's own it's sort of backwards compatible, it's simply that it came along at a similar time to lots of other nonsense, I have more of a Gripe with "Boost" axles/dropouts, the claim that it magically makes 'Plus' tyres easier to fit or substantially improves spoke triangulation is frankly cobblers both could have been achieved using the existing frame/fork spacings but wouldn't have helped to nudge people on towards a whole new bike. I still can't quite fathom the need for HT frames to go beyond 135 QR in most cases, but then Forwards compatibility with hubs will affect my next choice of bike/frame...

Like a few others I'm thinking long/slack 29er now too, as all the tweener/boost/plus shifting sands is apparently pitched at tricking the MBR/MBUK faithful into a big spend every 12-18 months... But I've probably just slipped into another marketing trap there too.

the bicycle industry as a whole has, up until recently, not made much effort to place technical barriers between the various market segments, they'll be doing it much more from here on.

With the exception of Shimano shifting, I can't think of many new incompatibilities.

Hubs were never compatible (because they were 130mm rear, and no one wants a 16 spoke front MTB wheel).

Brake calipers, I've no great desire to mix and match. And shimano calipers are often dirt cheap anyway eve if I wanted to switch. Flat mount for road, post mount for off road, and never the twain shall meet. Not since cantilevers have MTB bar levers worked properly with road brakes, so actually it's an improvement.

SRAM shifters are inter-compatible, shimano make flat bar trigger shifters for hybrids that match with road mechs.

OK it's annoying if you have a QR & post mount 'early adopter' CX bike, and want a new bolt through and flat mount one. But then there's nothing stopping you selling the old one complete, and I don't think many people would turn their noses up specifically at the caliper/axle issue (especially roadies who seem more inclined to buy a bike and ride it till it dies just gradually demoting it through race->crits->club runs->winter.

Rusty Spanner - Member

I have little respect for those riders who immediately swallowed the koolaid either.
Being a mindless consumerist shill is not an attractive character trait.

I never believed the 650b thing would take off. And then when it did, I dug my heels in. And it cost me a fortune. The kool-aid drinkers won that round.

Sometimes they lose- road disc being a great example (I don't care, I have a kick-ass hybrid with ancient, cheap 29er QR wheels and decade old mtb brakes in that I wouldn't swap for any new road bike, but plenty of people have got the shitty end of that particular stick.

These road 12mm axles are annoying. QR's work fine on all the millions of hybrid bikes with disc brakes and road tyres, but road bikes apparently need thru axles. No 12mm dyno hubs either I think.

I have 29er, 29+, 96er fat bike and 26er. I know which is the cheapest to run. I've bought 2 frames recently at £10 each and another really good one for £40. I get free tyres, tubes and wheels. Plus they can be a real laugh to ride...........

Been looking for 26" forks for my nieces bike, decent 26" forks cost as much now as they've ever done.

Have 3 x 26ers and wont be selling any of them. Dont get the sell now and cut your losses mentality either, if I did sell I would still need to put a large wedge towards replacing them.

I sold a really nice 26" 2012 trance around six months ago to fund a 29er, it had been tastefully upgraded, 140mm fox forks, dropper, clutch mech etc, nice upgrades to the contact points and tyres, plus a 1x10 conversion. Very little interest on any of the usual sites, ended up selling it on gumtree for way less than I had hoped.

wish I had the cash to hang on to it now.

I spotted all this shenanigans happening a few years ago and invested in a pair of Revelations. 26in, straight steerer and one of the last ones with easily internally adjustable travel. The bike I had at the time was more suitable for a Reba but I got the Revs as they'd fit more frames.
So I'm still using an 853 Inbred (one of the limited edition ones) as my main bike, the frame is 10 years old in a couple of months and I see no reason at all why I can't keep it another 10 years. Contact points and groupset are always available, I've got DT240s hubs that'll last forever, and a spare Mavic 717 just in case. I've got plenty of tyres and there's still plenty around. As long as I look after the forks I'll be fine. That said I've got 3 sets of rigid disc forks stashed away too.

Just because there's new stuff it doesn't make my bike and worse does it?

As an aside I was GIVEN a decent complete 650b Trek last year. It just needed a brake lever and a quick service. Cost me £20-£25 to sort.
So the writings on the wall for 27.5 too! 🙂

Been looking for 26" forks for my nieces bike, [b]decent[/b] 26" forks cost as much now as they've ever done.

Ahh, but [b]'half decent'[/b] are where it get's cheap.

Look at roadie groupsets. Even 10-12yr old Dura-ace is worth £200 for some shifters and mechs. But the same age ultegra or 105 is barely worth the postage. Because the few people left who want 10speed (or 26") are willing to pay that much for what is still the best stuff.

So if you want a bargain, look for the 'R' version of the fork rather than the "RC2Ti4-fandango".

(especially roadies who seem more inclined to buy a bike and ride it till it dies just gradually demoting it through race->crits->club runs->winter.

I think this and the natural conservatism of roadies (including the pros) means it'll be a long time before the standards bed in and have a real impact in the market (and may even depress sales). I reckon in 5 years time the pros will have been racing them for a couple of years and all >£500 road bikes will be disc. I also think that only 10% of the typical road club membership will be on discs, as they'll have nice rim-braked bikes that will last for years and probably a selection of nice expensive rim brake wheels to fuel their contempt for discs.

So, I should keep my 26" straight steerer Reba SL properly serviced then? (picks up phone to Liam before spares run out)

I've been looking for a decent set of mid range 26'' 100mm forks, straight steerer, QR, for my 26'' hardtail for ages. They are still going for silly money on eBay whenever I search, so it seems parts aren't worthless yet.

I've pretty much just finished building a new (to me) 26" full sus

I'm not interested in 650b as its alot of money for no real benefit

Running three/four 26" wheeled bikes currently & have no desire to change

Killing off 26" just means I don't buy new bikes any more - if I did buy new I'd want another 26"

"Aero" is the thing that's being pushed in road cycling: completely at odds with disc brakes and wide tyres......

THere will always be a market for rim brakes in road cycling IMO; there's no place for them in the TT/HC world, and that's where alot of cyclists tend to go first when they want to try a competition.

Good for sportives and gravel riding, that's about it.

I have this 2009 Anthem, XT 10 speed, SID RCT3 120mm, fox CTD shock tuned by TFTuned, Arch EX on hope pro 2, reverb post etc..
Would love to get either a fatbike or a new 27.5 anthem. But reluctant to sell the 26er as I'd get bugger all for it.
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I have 26" Genesis Latitude and the forks could do with a service and seal change - they go all lumpy and if they get wet the fork action goes to pot as though water is getting past the seal and mixing with the oil.

Rockshox recon coil, 100mm, straight steerer, standard QR

If I drop the lowers and put fresh oil in they are fine for a while.

But I don't have the tools to change the seals... Someone local to me suggested it would be nearly as cheap to buy some Suntour forks from China via ebay as it would be to pay someone to replace the seals..

I think most are confusing old bikes being worth zip rather than 26" being the problem. As someone else mentioned, 650b/29" have been the default for a fair few years now so virtually all 26" kit is getting on. This being the case it's worth what old kit is.

dawson - Member

But I don't have the tools to change the seals... Someone local to me suggested it would be nearly as cheap to buy some Suntour forks from China via ebay as it would be to pay someone to replace the seals..

No specialist tools needed- there's DIY tool options like plastic pipe but I fitted mine (to lyriks and revs) with just hand tools. It's probably not [i]ideal[/i] but it does the job

Haviing said that, if you've got significant water ingress it should be really obvious when you change the oil, might be more going on

I love my 26" hardtail and I keep upgrading it. Picked up some Rev RLT-Ti's for it the other year and just got some carbon wheels for it (superstar). I have a 29er solaris and Bird Aeris but every now and then it's nice to pick up the 26" and go out for a run ride enjoying a very light 26" hardtail which loves to jump. Yes it doesnt quite go over roots and other trail features as well as the 29er or full sus and needs more "thinking" but that is what makes it exciting and being so light it's like not having a bike under you compared to the others.