Really?

Where do you get your evidence from?

All the bike shop owners I’ve spoken to have been saying that MTB sales are down by a significant amount, but they’re shifting loads of road irons.

Who are all these riders that have been waiting for the withdrawal of 26inch and the introduction of a comparitively more expensive 650b model before buying a new bike?

And, as ever, could I ask that contributors please declare any industry involvement?

Ta.

Speed wise upto 140mm 29″ are the way to go. 26″/650b with 150mm+ and the suspension overcomes the larger wheel/geometry advantages of the 29″ and the smaller wheels are the way to go.

29er for me. But really do we need this again?

For me, after riding a hardtail 29er and then realising that due to longstanding injuries that full suss short travel 29er was the way forward because,

it was stable
fast …never really understood this getting the wheels going thang
rolled over things better than 26
pretty bloddy good in singletrack …still learning berms
had enough travel for my north England riding
that 100mm or so made my trails interesting and enjoyable again

rode my 26 and it better in one place technical climbs, so sold 26 and now have a 100mm short travel bike and a 125mm long travel .very different bikes but for the timbering not changing.

As above ride and try

Has anyone mentioned that 650B brings the trail alive?

I don’t get this. Everyone ranting about cynical marketing ploys, greed driven etc.

Everything they do & have done is driving towards one thing. Profit. Is everyone getting their knickers in a twist because they have just realised this?

Most people just buy the whole bike though. Only saddos (us) buy in bits. The needs of the many etc.

650b makes very good sense to me.
This is the way all my bikes have been heading for years so to have a new standard that fits what I like is fine by me. I’m happy to have a bit less travel and get rid of those balloon tyres on 22inch rims thanks.

As ever can those that are just going to state their opinion 457 times on one thread to try and force their opinion down everyones throat please make it clear when contributing. 😉 Ta.

I don’t really care about wheel size. I have 26″ wheels, they are round and truish and work very well. If i can’t ride over something i will get off the the bike and push. Buy what ever you think is right and don’t worry about what others are saying/riding.

29ers for tall people:
Proportional sizing?
Do you use the same pressures, bar width and grips as a 5 footer?
Of course you don’t.

MTB’s are out of fashion, yes, I agree.
Is this more likely to be due to;
A. The mainstream acceptability of road cycling, combined with British success.
B. Disproportionate price rises in mtb bikes and components over the last few years.
C. Confusion over the myriad types of mtb available.
D. The lack of a third wheelsize.

I don’t have a 10 speed, bolt through, tubeless, tapered all mountain bike.
And neither does 99% of the installed 26 inch user base.

As for fashion.
For some people, maybe.

Personally, spending money for the sake of it is neither fun nor fashionable.
Neither is being stitched up.

To me, cycling is about having fun.

You and your industry friends obviously see things differently.

I find myself agreeing with Rusty Spanner and with maccruiskeen 🙂 We may have discussed this topic ad nauseum but I’m still finding snippets on this thread that are either changing the way I view things or helping to clarify my own thoughts, which is always good. Keep it up folks 🙂

I am intrigued by the idea that MTB is out of fashion. To me many of the current trends indicate the opposite and have been seen before in many sports – tennis, golf, squash (remember that?!?). I think MTB is at/just over its peak in popularity growth.

Is there a chance that none of this is malicious. Just perhaps the old industry standard (26 and my current choice) is not the optimum one? Perhaps the next suggestion (29) isn’t either? Perhaps we now have a sensible compromise if not optimum choice for the majority of new buyers?

Happy to be proven naive in that suggestion!! FWIW, all this does for me is to delay my next purchase and that is hardly what the industry should have in mind!!

A slightly bigger wheel means slightly longer chain stays and/or a slightly bigger BB drop, which makes lifting the front wheel slightly harder. It’s not a big difference (plenty of folk can manual a 29er) but many of us are crap enough at manuals on a 26″ bike if we are honest, so why make it harder. I just don’t buy the idea that a 650b is better than 26. Different, yes. Better, no.

As I say it’s not a big difference, but I can’t see how a wheel that is a bit heavier, a bit weaker and a bit harder to get off the ground can be deemed to be undoubtedly better. But I tend to agree with you. If it would mean the end of the wheelsize debate I’d accept all bikes being 650b.

Can you see all those xc racers giving up 29ers?

They’ll often ride what they are given, admittedly, but it’ll be a big U turn when it comes to racing and how the riders feedback counts, etc, etc.

I’ve said before, I can’t get why (Giant not included) the ‘industry’ is sounding the death knell for the 26er but if if 650b really is the best of both world’s why others aren’t saying it would kill both sizes.

That said, is now a good time to admit I’ve just bought a 29er?!

🙂 Don’t worry I still have a 26er fs. But I wanted a 29er ht for mile munching and xc duties.

Not broke, but as it happens I’ve just been taking a buckle out of a 26″ Hope/Flow Ex wheel. OK, I’m a clumsy bugger, but a mountain bike wheel can take a bit of a hammering over rocky ground.

Not that I’ve got anything against bigger wheels. I’ve got a 29er hardtail, which is great in some areas (and not so good in others). I wouldn’t even have a problem with a few manufacturers bringing out 650b bikes and trying to convince people that they were better. It is the wholesale movement of the industry to a new standard overnight with no discussion and no evidence that it’s any better than the old one that bugs me.

On what evidence was 26″ adopted in the first place? I’m not any kind of wheel size evangelist. As a slow burning serial upgrader a change in wheel size was something I was unlikely to make anytime soon (or anytime ever) until theft left me with a clean slate. I bought a 29er because it was what was in the shop. If something else had been in the shop I’d have bought that instead…. and stuck with it for 10 years regardless of whether 100 more wheel sizes appeared or they never changed again. But between the bike I lost and the bike I bought – almost nothing is the same – the different size tyres is just the start. The top headset race, the bar diameter at the grips and the bit that holds the saddle, the pedal axels the same as my old bike. The seat clamp was familiar looking. That is really. And I didn’t consider my old bike to be old – I’d only had the frame for two rides. So it was new, but it was to all intents and purposes it was new old stock as it was pretty much the only FS frame I could buy that my existing wheels and forks could be bolted on to.

I’m baffled by the conservatism over wheel size and the desire for there to be some sort of evidential basis for change when the the existing standard was entirely arbitrary. When every other component of the MTB package has changed and changed again- how is a rim/tyre size, that never had a reason to be bolted to an off-road bicycle other than they both happened to already be available, treated with so much fear and suspicion? Its almost as if the rim was the definition of the whole sport.

I think the ability to set new rim sizes shows that the sport has reached a maturity. The tyre is pretty much the most capital-hungry part of the bicycle. I’ve got the odds and ends to make pretty much all of a bike from scratch (if not the actual inclination of skill) – I can bend,cut and join tubes, mill and lathe blocks of metal, tap threads. I could make a bike with any geometry and make hub, headset and BB of any form factor I choose to dream up. It would probably take me all year to make a functioning 12 speed gear set that is so obviously the way forward – but it could be done. It would probably be another years work to make the cable outers for my new 1.33333 recurring cable standard. That would be tedious. Rims are a bit of a stretch but re-rolling and pinning existing ones isn’t (presuming you have a larger one to start with) – as is a saddle you’d actually want to sit on but if the forumites of STW pooled their resources we could sort that together. But what we couldn’t do, all of us put together with all our clever arses and all our sheds combined – is we couldn’t make a tyre. A tyre, and a change in tyres, is a big, big deal. It either means the technology to make tyres is getting cheaper or the market is big enough to make the capital costs worth while.

With all the 26″ bikes out there, 20 years of pub-bikes, blatters and argos specials – if I made a new 26″ tyre tomorrow and it was an absolute stinker – sloppy, slippy, heavy and ugly (maybe not even properly round) I could still sell it somewhere, eventually. But if I make a new tyre standard tomorrow I’ve only got anyone who might buy a bike from tomorrow onwards to sell to. Thats brave.

So to me it seems to mark a point where bicycles can get more interesting. Is that not good?

650b if you find the range of tyres available for 26 inch too confusing.

(I had a choice of 2 sarky answers here, the other was “650b if you’ve bought into the advertising that says you need something bigger than 26, but you’re too afraid of change to buy something that makes any actual difference”)

What tyres for 650b thread time 😉