36" Tires

Nice b*ke!

Would you mind sharing some of your experience and impressions with us? How did you come to build it? How does it ride? What’s fun and what sucks?

(I hope I don’t get ostracized for suggesting to talk about a b*ke. :wink: )

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This is actually a good thing. Since the unicycling community brought 36” rims to fruition, and the bicycling community is slowly dipping its toes into 36” bikes, there should be more awareness about unicycling coming in the future as our niche market provides/drives a demand for rims and tires for a much more mainstream market. Or perhaps we get forgotten and just end up with more 36” options for rims and tires. Either way we are going to benefit.

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I suspect 32" will come first. Mountain bikers have been slowly moving to larger wheels for decades now. Lately there seems to be a consensus that 29 is faster than 27.5. I’m thinking 32 will be next.

It’s all about access to 36” presta tubes that has me discussing this. I know you can get them but they’re not as common as the standard 36” tubes here on UDC UK.

Terry Peterson found 36" presta tubes in stock here: Vee Tire 36x2.25 Presta 40mm Valve Tube

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Wow must be new research, after years of riding and racing all sorts of vehicles it is well known that smaller wheels accelerate faster. Unless you don’t have gearing and are refering to maintaining top speed?

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There are quite a number of articles and videos like this one. It seems professional riders just have a slight edge on the bigger wheels.

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Yup, seems like everyone is going to at least one 29" wheel in professional mountain biking nowadays. (Some ride a 27.5" rear because they would hit their butt on the wheel otherwise).

Personally, I think that industry is on the way of “overshooting” with longer, “slacker” bikes and will dial it back in a few years when they realize that straight line speed is not everything. Not back to the old 26" bikes with ridiculously short wheelbases (which really look weird now), but some of the new bikes have gone too far the other way I think.
Anyway, long story short, I don’t see 32" mountainbikes coming to the mainstream, since you start running into some serious foot/butt clearance issues even for tall guys at that point - but time will tell.

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You’re probably right, but the trend has been pretty clear. It wasn’t that long ago that 24" bikes were fairly common, but those are pretty much relegated to the children’s market these days and the 26" size has been mostly replaced by 27.5 and 29ers are still growing in popularity.

I think 36ers are just a leap too far for the general mountain bike market and 32 may be as well, but I suspect that there are a lot of cyclists out there thinking, “if 29 is faster than 27.5, then how would a 30 or 30.5 stack up?”

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That’s gravity not acceleration to speed, also I might add, larger wheels ride over crevase and ruts better. That is not faster, that is proper application, not proof of speed. (also a little marketing to a new and popular trend). Oh and I can still ride faster than most on my “old” 26er. It is in the rider and gearing. I would not be as fast at a down hill though because of the terrain. Proper aplication

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I don’t disagree with any of what you’ve said, but the current conventional wisdom among mountain bikers seems to be otherwise. Personally, I don’t think there was any compelling reason to switch from 26 to 27.5, aside from convincing bicyclists that they wouldn’t be competitive unless they had the latest, greatest 27.5” wheels. 29ers are a bit different as they’re significantly larger and you can notice the difference in their ride.

All things being equal, the smaller wheel will always be lighter, stronger, easier to accelerate/decelerate and easier to manhandle due to frame geometry and a larger wheel will have a better angle of attack and more angular momentum.

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Has any compared the track monster to the nightrider lite for road riding? They seem to be fairly similar in weight (the TM is about 100g heavier) but the tread design is very different, so I also wonder about camber sensitivity.

This is the first I’ve ever heard of this tyre.

Perhaps you’ve heard it called the Vee Tire 36” or something before? Technically the name is “Vee Tire Trax Monster”, but I usually see it referenced as Vee Tire 36” or similar.

Just from the tread pattern I’d expect it to be noisier on road if nothing else, but they’re pretty uncommon here in the UK (UDC UK don’t sell them) so I’ve not yet had a chance to ride one.

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I rode a Vee 36 tyre in the past, not vey noisy, this is a good 36 tyre

And again, it is the proper application of larger diameter has less of a curve and rolls over wider openings in the earth. Such as if you have a shopping cart rolling in the parking lot and it incounters a curb it is less likely to roll up over that curb where as a unicycle with a 36" wheel can ride up without even a hop. This is not a faster wheel. it is the proper use of the diameter. Also the mountain bike team racers will ride what their sponser (team) gives (pays) them to ride to sell their product. I have personally experienced this. The improper use of smaller wheel on a bicycle or unicycle can be disasterous. Remember Cannondale tried a rear 24" and 26" front back in the 80’s (sorry to younger readers) for the acceleration reasons, but off road the terrain undid that quickly.

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TLDR: out of all the big players in the MTB tire market, WTB and Kenda might be most inclined to produce a new 36" tire.

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Nice link, thanks!

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The existing rim selection for 32” and 36” are also a limiting factor, as the current rim selections are 1000+ grams each due to being developed for unicycles.

Well, no. Maybe they aren’t aware we now have 580g carbon rims. Should we send a mail to Maxxis to inform them of that fact? :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for the link, really interesting!

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