I have been teasing the idea of buying a 26" muni. Alternatively, I have been contemplating just building a 26" wheel and tossing it on my KH29 when I want to ride the 26".
Have any of you tried this? Besides for the slight inconvenience of having to swap the wheels in and out, is there a downside to that plan?
One more thing, I have searched all the 24" vs. 26" threads and I am pretty sure I want a 26". I do a lot of xc and some technical riding on my 29" (29x2.2 runnin on 125/150mm cranks). However, on some technical sections (tight rock fields with lots of hopping and slow navigation in tight areas) I just can’t manage to thread my large wheel through. I often feel that a smaller wheel would be a bit more nimble.
In your experience, how noticeably different is maneuverability between a 26" and 29"? Mostly I am wondering about what hopping on a 26" feels like.
Roughly speaking, the gap between the tyre and the fork crown will be about 1.5 inches bigger with the smaller wheel. Other than that, it’s a five minute job to swap over. The only slight issue is that you may need to stop to nip up the clamps half a mile into every ride after you’e changed wheel.
With a rack you could build a “continental” unicycle with a spare wheel…
I had both 24" and 29" munis, then I built a 26" muni and sold the other two. In my experience the 26" wheel falls right between the 24" and 29" in pretty much all aspects: hopping, speed, maneuverability, etc. I really like the 26" for a lot of my riding.
Last year I added a Conundrum with a Large Marge / Larry 3.8 (it’s great too) and am now building up a new 29" wheel to sometimes run in that frame. I don’t have a real great reason for doing it except, “why not?”
You can build a wheel for about $200 (KH 26 rim, rimstrip, Nimbus 36h ISIS hub from UDC; spokes from danscomp), plus the cost of the tube/tire ($20 - $50), plus cranks and pedals if you don’t want to swap them when changing wheels ($50 - $100).
The 26" wheel will work fine in your KH29 frame provided you don’t care about brakes. If you want brakes your options are to adapt the mounts to work with the shorter wheel or use a disc brake (MountainUni crank mounted or Nimbus hub mounted).
Opting for a full second wheel with cranks, pedals, and brakes will not save you much money over buying a KH26, but a wheel does take up a little less space in the garage than a second uni. It seems to me that if you don’t anticipate wanting to change the wheel more than a few times a year it could be a good way to go. If you want to switch wheels every few rides, a second uni is way more convenient.
No problem at all; I even managed to adapt to put V-brakes on a 26" wheel in a 29" KH frame. Pictures here.
Disk brakes would work fine for either size wheel, and a number of people swap out Mountainuni wheels in larger frames.
The only brake that couldn’t work (unless you’re really imaginative about adapters) would be a Magura rim brake.