On 12/4/2017 4:56 AM, Ned Mantei wrote:
On 04-12-17 00:59, Frank Krygowski wrote:
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"?


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...

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