Mountain bike tire/wheel sizes

[Frank Krygowski]

In what seems to be perennial efforts to churn the market, mountain bike
designers went from 26" (ISO 559) to the ones knicknamed 29" (ISO 622,
same as 700C) because they claimed the 26" was too small. Then they soon
claimed the 29s were too big, so they started selling what they called
27.5" (584, same as 650B), supposedly "just right."

Does anyone know how successful the latter size has become? Is it a
dominant size now? Does it look like it's going to stick around, or is
this likely to become an orphan - as in "nobody uses that any more"?

--
- Frank Krygowski

[AMuzi]

No idea.

http://www.bicycleretailer.com/studies-reports/2017/10/30/bpsa-shipments-dealers-down-5-percent-through-september#.WiSTRUq99PI

As I've mentioned before, in bicycles or any other industry,
success is wholly due to management's intellectual gifts.
Failure has a thousand causes, all external (weather,
commodity prices, regulations, trade flows, The Fed,
politics, rim diameter, BB format and so on)

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[Ned Mantei]

I think the problem is more that 26" is on its way out, although I
expect replacement rims, tires, and tubes to be available for a long
time. Last year I bought a new mountain bike, and [my knees] wanted the
lowest possible gears. The smaller the wheels the lower the effective
gearing, so I wanted 26". The available bikes with such wheels were all
bottom-of-the-line, with at best Acera components. I ended up with
27.5". But at least 24/42 gearing, which I use a lot.

Here in Switzerland there is another new problem related to wheels on
mountain bikes. You can take your bike on the train, which is great for
tours: You don't have to start and end in the same place, and in fact
you don't need a car at all. However, usually you have to hang the bike
from a hook in the entryway of the rail car, and the hooks don't work
with fatter tires. I had this problem recently with 27.5 x 2.25" tires,
and had to just stand with the bike. My impression is that 2.8 and 3"
wheels are becoming popular, which will make things that much worse. I
registered this with the railway service's customer line, and the woman
I spoke to said that also she had had this problem. But there are an
awful lot of railway passenger cars that would need new hooks, so it
could be awhile...

Ned

[Frank Krygowski]

Hmm. To solve that problem, could you bring along your own S hook? Make
one end big enough to handle your tire and rim, and hang the other end
from the train's hook?

I can see how designers have problems trying to accommodate all bike
designs. The difficulty arises whether the task is to design a hook in a
train, a bike rack for parking bikes, a bike rack to carry bikes on a
bus or car, etc. Most bikes are close to typical, but then you've got
fat bikes, small-wheel bikes, recumbents, tandems, electric bikes, bikes
with panniers ...


--
- Frank Krygowski

[avag...@gmail.com]

goo.gl/dP2ZHo

[sms]

27.5 seems to be the new super-standard size, being an acceptable
compromise between 29 and 26. Definitely an advantage to the larger
wheel size on mountain bikes. It's not surprising that sales of the
newer wheel size bicycles are increasing, but if sales of mountain bikes
overall were down then it probably means lower sales of department store
quality bicycles.

Still a few 26" wheeled mountain bikes at the LBS for shorter riders,
but not many.

There are factors other than "management's intellectual gifts" in any
industry, factors beyond the control of management. Look at places where
bicycle usage has plummeted, and the reasons go beyond what management
could control. In China, massive investment in mass transit has made
transportational cycling much less necessary. On my alma mater's campus,
where almost everyone used bicycles to get around, the distances between
buildings, and the distances to off-campus housing have increased as the
university has expanded and bicycling is less practical.

[Tanguy Ortolo]

Frank Krygowski, 2017-12-04 17:08+0100:

> Hmm. To solve that problem, could you bring along your own S hook? Make
> one end big enough to handle your tire and rim, and hang the other end
> from the train's hook?

That may not be possible, because train hooks position is a compromise
between not being too hard to reach and yet having the entire bicycle
off the car floor. If you add your own hook to that, your bike will be
about 10 cm down, and the rear wheel may touch the floor, resulting in a
very less stable position.

--
Tanguy

[Frank Krygowski]

I think it was in Estonia that we hung our folding Bikes Friday from train hooks
and had them dangling and swinging. Other bikes would have had their rear
wheels stabilized by a sort of attachment on the floor of the train car.

The best they can do is design for what's common. Those of us with uncommon
bikes have to adapt.

- Frank Krygowski