Just a thought, but as I understand it, the original mountain bike pioneers based their bikes on early 26″ wheeled beach cruisers.
What if they had instead started out by adding fatter tyres and flat handlebars to 700c cyclocross bikes?
700c/29″ would have become the norm and 26″ would be seen as the industry conspiracy to get us all to buy new bikes.

29 and 26 do offer a pretty big difference so can be sold on merit… We’d probably feel the same about 26 and 29 as we do about 29 and 26.

But yeah, if we already had 650b and suddenly 26 inch was the cool thing, I’d feel the same. The point isn’t that 26 is brilliant and we’re all dead attached to it, it’s that 26 is established, and that 650b makes a tiny difference for a huge cost.

If you phased out diesel tomorrow and introduced dieselb which give 0.05% more fuel economy but needs a new car, and in a couple of years you can’t get diesel anywhere I’d feel the same about that- not because I love diesel but because I don’t need a new car to use it.

PS I hate cats

Any business model will use marketing to make you buy stuff.

This has no relation to whether or not its better or if you actually need it.

Please google French randonneurs, rough stuff fellowship, Tom ritcheys first bike, Geoff apps. Etc etc.

Any business model will use marketing to make you buy stuff.

Not true. An ineffective business model will try to cover up the fact their product isn’t that good or doesn’t meet a real customer need. Which is what we have in this instance.

A good business model is one which uses marketing to understand customer needs and orientates every aspect of the business to meet those needs and to make a profit in the process. MTB used to have this – suspension forks, disc brakes, full suss all fell within this definition IMO…

Indeed – fundamental misunderstanding of marketing here. When I did marketing it was all about understanding the customers’ needs, why orders weren’t being made for current products and had direct influence on the product design and development. What a lot of people seem to describe as marketing is more accurately sales – 650B definitely appears to be sales rather than marketing driven.

If this thread gets past page one….

Kittensmoke! Don’t breathe this!

At least they’re still round…

At least they’re still round…

Good point. Oval wheels that are 26″ at the smallest cross-section and 29″ at the widest must offer the best of both worlds surely.

Does this thread make the OP guilty of kittenocide?

Geoff Apps did that, but the Marin County klunker crew were cooler.

And in 50s France –

modified 650B touring bikes .. with sus forks. And good bars.

Arrrrrgggghhhhhhh Not the same pointless circular debate. My current bikes are 26inch when it’s time for a new bike It might have a different wheel size maybe not better but different. Does all this really mater.

I don’t think the OP is wanting to start a debate on what’s best, more a “what if” from a historical and development perspective.

I reckon that, at some point, folk would have experimented with smaller wheel sizes. After all, we’ve already had some DH bike with 24″ rears. Whether or not these (26ers) would ever have become more mainstream is open to speculation. Maybe we’d have seen more 69ers too. 650B though? It’s hard to say whether that would have been the smaller wheel size or if folk would have tried 26″.

we would all have stopped mountainbiking as the cost of replacement 700c wheels in the early days, when rims were weak, would have bankrupted us all.

However, this heightened evolutionary pressure on rim strength would have increased the speed of rim development, bringing forward carbon rim use much earlier than it did. So we would have come back to mtbing a few years later, on carbon 29ers.

Still, it’s interesting though… I was going to say it’s taken a lot of effort to get 29ers to the point they’re widely acceptable, even a few years ago all the 29ers I’d ridden were big clumsy barges… So that would have been a limitation in this guns of the south scenario where Gary Fisher goes back in time and tells his younger self to go 29.

But then I thought, you know what? Old bikes were all **** regardless of wheel size, the development of 29ers is just a little more on top of the development of 26ers. I suppose increased weight etc affects 29ers more but then bad suspension affects 26ers more.

I’m liking the idea of oval wheels. We could call them “Biopace”.

50s France my foot,
He’s a member of the California highway patrol circa 1979. 😀

Not the same pointless circular debate.

Got it in one, Bruce. 😉

This isn’t about how some riders, in some situations, find one wheel size marginally better than another.
It’s more about how wheel size is almost like a religion.
Some people only know of one invisible friend in the sky from birth, so when they hear of a new one, they will instinctively oppose it, regardless of any evidence.
Most people had only ever experienced 26″ wheels until a few years ago, so they instinctively oppose any change.
My point is that if 29″ had been the only size they knew, then they would oppose any change to that too.

Trying to be serious here:

If 29 had been first then 26 would likely be touted as the only way to get fat tyres into normal sized bikes so 26 x anything less than 2.3 tyres would never have existed.

What size is there that’s a bit smaller than 29″?

We’d have all been happily riding 29ers for years, then 26ers come along, some manufacturers dip their toes in, one or two jump in wholeheartedly. Big arguments ensue on the internet.

A few years later it becomes apparent that people aren’t ready in the massive numbers manufacturers had hoped to make the transition – 26ers are seen as good, and perhaps better for some types of riding, but they aren’t becoming the default choice. Big arguments continue on the internet.

So the manufacturers go back and find a size that’s a bit smaller than 29″ and sell it as giving you the best of both worlds. Although it’s much closer to 29″ than 26″, people try and present them as “27.5” and, having burnt their fingers a bit on 26ers, rather than offering bikes in all sizes, 29ers stop being developed and manufacturers throw their weight fully behind the new wheel size, with 29er increasingly seen as anachronistic, or the preserve of cheap, chainstore BSOs. There are big arguments about it on the internet.

edlong – Member

29ers stop being developed and manufacturers throw their weight fully behind the new wheel size, with 29er increasingly seen as anachronistic, or the preserve of cheap, chainstore BSOs.

Meanwhile in the real world, Trek are about to launch a carbon Remedy 29er, which just took 1st and second places in the EWS (women’s and mens respectively). 26 might be dead but 29 is just hitting its stride IMO.

I’d agree that there are some great 29ers coming out now, but ironically I think 650B has helped there. In the past when it was all about trying to get 26″ riders to switch, they seemed obsessed with a pointless (and fruitless) attempt to make 29ers feel like 26″ bikes. Now there is a new king in town they seem to have much more freedom to make 29ers that actually take advantage of the bigger wheel.

Tell me more about DieselB.

I’d agree that there are some great 29ers coming out now, but ironically I think 650B has helped there. In the past when it was all about trying to get 26″ riders to switch, they seemed obsessed with a pointless (and fruitless) attempt to make 29ers feel like 26″ bikes. Now there is a new king in town they seem to have much more freedom to make 29ers that actually take advantage of the bigger wheel.

You might well be onto something there.

And now for something more worthy and with more point to it than yet another god awful wheel size (mine is best, no mine is best) thread:

A collection of dogs dragging their arses along the ground set to classical music:

[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFvkr6GBWLw[/video]

We really, really have to move on from this.

There were a few false starts. If Vernon Blake had lived past 1930, we may have had the mountain bike much earlier. This is his bike for mountain tracks in the French Alps. (The chain is supposed to look like that – it’s another story)

Strangely those are probably 26″ wheels and those are 2″ tyres. – but not 26″ as we know it – it was almost certainly the 571mm version because that was used on delivery bikes and commonly fitted with 2″ tyres.

Then there was this for export markets in 1938

And this Elswick-Hopper also in 1938, and it’s even got a truss fork.

So there was plenty potential for the mtb long before it was popularised.

Prior to WW1 there were 2″ tyres available for 28″ (634mm ERD) rims, so we had the 29er over 100 years ago.

There was even a fatbike proposed in 1931.

🙄
………………………….

My god, I honestly thought two minutes of dogs dragging their arses along the ground might have killed this thread (and hopefully deterred more of its ilk).

Am I going to have to find a YouTube compilation of people forlornly sitting by the road throwing stones unenthusiastically at a tin can?

Please, in the name of whatever you consider sacred, stop this. Please.

If you’re not interested in discussing bikes, there’s plenty knitting forums…

[video]http://youtu.be/EVkYaZXCl8U[/video]

If you’re not interested in discussing bikes, there’s plenty knitting forums…

Yeah, I looked. But unfortunately they are all full of boring, tedious muppets arguing about which length of knitting needle is best rather than actually enjoying knitting.

dannyh – Member
Yeah, I looked. But unfortunately they are all full of boring, tedious muppets arguing about which length of knitting needle is best rather than actually enjoying knitting.

What a shame. Sounds like some of the boring, tedious, small-minded fashionistas from here have gone over there to inflict their condescending ennui on unsuspecting knitters.

Maybe they’d be better off knitting.

On a related note, what’s the best way to kill yourself while making as much of a mess as possible?

svalgis – Member
On a related note, what’s the best way to kill yourself while making as much of a mess as possible?

This is the bike forum. If you don’t like talking about bikes, don’t open bike discussions or subjects that “bore” you, so how about taking that question to the chat forum?

Nah.