A while back there was some discussion about different 29er tires. During that discussion, Joe Marshall suggested that the 29er tire I really wanted was a 2.35" Schwalbe “Big Apple”. Now - I don’t think Joe actually owns one of these tires, and how he knew that I really wanted one (I hadn’t heard of the Big Apple at that time) is beyond me, but he was right - I really wanted one for my 29er. When my new Big Apple arrived I was disapointed to find out that it was too big to fit my 29er - the crown was too close and that big 'ol tire rubbed. Lucky for me I was borrowing a certain blue 29er at the time and the Big Apple fit it - barely.
That was over two months ago and since then I’ve been riding only my MUni. I have several projects in the works and one of them is a new 29er frame that will fit the Big Apple. This weekend I finally got a frame completed, assembled and test ridden. There are a few pictures and some technical info in the gallery located here:
The frame is still unfinished and I suppose I’ll get it anodized although I’ve been thinking of trying something different on this one. The hub is one of my home made Profile splined jobs and it’s laced to a Sun Rhyno Lite 700c rim. The Rhyno Lite is wide for a 700c rim and the Big Apple mounts nicely on it. All in all it’s a very nice looking uni.
Like I said earlier, I’ve been riding my 24" MUni with 170mm cranks (BTW - used all 170mm on a MUni ride yesterday and wished for more) for a couple months so getting back on a 29er with 140mm cranks took a little getting used to. Before long I was feelin’ good though! The Big Apple is so quiet and smooth … it just feels great! This evening I rode on gravel, pavement and dirt. I Climbed a few hills - fell off a few times - hopped around a bit. The light weight and large volumn tire makes hopping pretty easy. When I made the hub I spaced the hub flanges as wide as possible and still fit in the frame so hopefully between that and the Sun rim I’ll have a very strong 29er wheel. We’ll see …
Another lovely frame. What is your “different” idea for finishing this one? Did you make your own broach for the aluminum cranks? How difficult was it to run the broach through and index it with sufficient precision?
>Joe Marshall suggested that the 29er tire I
>really wanted was a 2.35" Schwalbe “Big Apple”. Now - I don’t think
>Joe actually owns one of these tires, and how he knew that I really
>wanted one (I hadn’t heard of the Big Apple at that time) is beyond me,
>but he was right - I really wanted one for my 29er. When my new Big
>Apple arrived I was disapointed to find out that it was too big to fit
>my 29er - the crown was too close and that big 'ol tire rubbed.
Joe’s words (among other influences) made me really want a 2.35"
Schwalbe Big Apple too for my 29’er. So I ordered one from the LBS, it
hasn’t arrived yet.
Steve, what frame was it that was not high enough? I have a Nimbus II
28" frame and from the clearance with the standard 700c x 35 mm tyre I
just assumed that it would fit.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn’t like being seen wearing them in public.
Steve’s new unicycle: another work of art. I think I see tomorrow’s racing unicycle there! Cokers are nice, but they’re heavy and ungainly by comparison. And they’re too fast for a standard athletics track, so I think 700c/29" is the next step.
This may be a stupid question, but what’s the difference between 700c and 29" What does the tire say on the side? Is 29" the larger-volume version of 700c, but fit the same rims?
Lastly, could you tell me how big that Big Apple tire is (actual diameter or circumference)? If we start writing rules for 700c racing, we’ll need to set a limit on tire size…
Harper - I’ve been thinking about painting the frame. I think that fading from a red crown to yellow fork legs would be worth a try.
I made the Profile crank broach from half a Profile BMX bike axle. The metal is too soft to broach steel but I’ve done three sets of aluminum cranks and it still seems fine. One of these days I’ll make a better broach from tool steel. I’ve found that I have to run the broach through the crank three times before the splines are good. To “time” the cranks with each other I broach the first one, then with the broach still just barely in the first crank, I start the broach in the second crank and just eyeball them so the arms line up with each other. Then I pull the first crank off the broach and push it on through the second crank.
Klass - The 29er frame I have that won’t work with the Big Apple is one I made. Look here to see the Big Apple in this frame as well as on Harper’s Blue Shift:
I’m glad you are getting a Big Apple and hope it fits in your frame. I’ll be very interested to read your observations and impressions of the Big Apple! It’s a LOT of tire … especially compared to your 700c x 35.
John - I might have this wrong but here’s what I think I know about 29er tire sizes: What we call 28" and 29" tires both fit on a 700c rim. The smaller sizes such as 700c x 35 are considered 28". The larger profile tires are called 29" just because somebody (maybe Gary Fisher?) decided to call them that. It also seems to me that Euopeans tend to call a 700c rimmed unicycle a 28" while us Yanks tend to call them 29". To further confuse the issue, there’s an old, obsolete 28" tire designation that DOESN’T fit on a 700c rim.
The size printed on the side of the Big Apple is “60-622 (28 x 2.35)”. The 60-622 is meaningful since the numbers say that the width of the tire is 60mm and the rim seat diameter is 622mm. The 28 x 2.35 doesn’t mean much. The common denominator is the 700c rim.
I did a simple roll out with no weight on the wheel and got a Big Apple circumference of 91.25 inches.
It surprises me that the roll out of the Big Apple that you measured is 91.25" which yields 29.06" in diameter. I measured it to be 92.00" which yields a diameter of 29.30" which I am more inclined to believe. It looks much bigger in the Blue Shift frame than the Nanoraptor which I measured to have a true 29" diameter unloaded when inflated.
I like the color scheme you proposed but you’re still too hung up on red. Break out into the higher frequencies.
Did you groove the BMX spline to relieve the aluminum shavings during the broach? The taper is clear and I guess that the top one is the fashioned broach and the bottom one is the unmodified BMX spline.
I keep lamenting not buying Jagur’s SH framed uni.
That is one “fine” frame. Reminds me of calendars with certain
types of pictures. After Steve has made 12 different models, Uni.com can sell the calendars under the title: Kinport Babes.
the frame was free,the only catch was you had to buy all my parts surrounding it
that uni is still in Salem,it belongs to DudleyDoRide now.
i have decided that 24x3 is not for me,i hope to get on with the Super 29er thing.
24x3 is like riding byke on rollers without any wind,a big sweaty,bad experiance.some of you no doubt love it but i think that its a slow way to have fun and i am hoping that the 29er will be the answer,taco of not…
>It surprises me that the roll out of the Big Apple that you measured is
>91.25" which yields 29.06" in diameter. I measured it to be 92.00" which
>yields a diameter of 29.30" which I am more inclined to believe. It
>looks much bigger in the Blue Shift frame than the Nanoraptor which I
>measured to have a true 29" diameter unloaded when inflated.
Harper thanks for that remark (see my other post in this thread). But
it surprises me (in turn) that your Giant Mutant Slide Rule has a pi
scale that seems to be based on a value of pi rounded to only two
decimal places.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
>I’m glad you are getting a Big Apple and hope it fits in your frame.
>I’ll be very interested to read your observations and impressions of the
>Big Apple! It’s a LOT of tire … especially compared to your 700c x
>35.
I have no doubt the tyre will fit even if it is as large as harper
says. In my frame, the distance between the centre of the hub and the
underside of the crown is 38.4 cm which should accommodate a tyre of
max 30.24" true outside diameter (with no clearance). The side
clearance is plenty anyway.
However, there is a problem. This morning the friendly LBS let me know
that contrary to what they said earlier, the 28 x 2.35 is not
available in the Netherlands, there is no way for them to get it. 28 x
2.00 is no problem to get but I would prefer to go all the way after
this time of anticipation. My LBS told me that the tyre is
manufactured somewhere in the Far East but they have no further info
as they get all their Schwalbe stuff through the Dutch importer.
My question to you (Steve, or anyone else having a suggestion - maybe
Joe Marshall?) is how you got the tyre. So that maybe I can order it
from there too, depending on the shipping cost.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
Harper - I stand firm on the 91.25" Big Apple circumference … for now. My Big Apple has only a few miles on it and in time grow to become the same circumference as yours.
I should have explained the picture of the broach. The broach has steps so the entire amount of material isn’t removed all at once. The grooves at each step are there so the aluminum being removed has some place to go but also the grooves create a cutting edge at each step. This broach is too short … a proper one would have more steps about three times longer. The piece below the broach is the other half of the axle the broach was made from.
Klaas - I bought my Big Apple online at www.schwalbetires.com. That web site is for the North American distributor of Schwalbe tires located in Victoria, British Columbia. If you order a tire direct from Schwalbe - and you are VERY lucky - Celeste will send you a confirming email. She confirmed my order and won my heart!
http://www.utopia-fahrrad.de/15Jahre.html used to have them listed in their shop. The shop seems dead now though, might be worth emailing them to ask. It’s pretty easy to buy things from other EU countries.
http://shop.epple.org/ has Decke Big Apple Reflex 60-622 HS 338 Kevlar listed for 22,90 EUR, use the schnellsuche to find Big Apple.
search google for
fahrrad big apple
for lots of German bike shops. If you can’t cope with the German, email the German shops in English and they’ll almost certainly be able to cope.
Question: even though the Big Apple is virtually a slick tire, does anyone feel that it makes a better MUni tire than actual 700cc cross-country tires (e.g. the Velociraptor or Nanoraptor) because the Big Apple’s volume is larger?
I’m very lucky to have three 29’ers each with different tires. Two of them use a 22mm wide Alex Adventurer rim with an IRC Notos on one and a Big Apple on the other. The third one uses a 27mm wide Sun rim with a WTB Motoraptor tire. All three 29’ers have 170mm cranks.
The Big Apple is frustrating to me for offroad use. Of the three tires, it’s the best by far at soaking up bumps and rolling smoothly over rocks but it’s almost impossible to keep it from trying to climb out of a dished trail. It’s a constant struggle to stay on/in the trail. I think air pressure has a lot to do with how much it wants to climb the side of the trail - less pressure seems to make the problem much worse.
Yesterday I rode the Notos on the trail and experimented with air pressure. I started out with about 50psi and let air out a little at a time. 50psi is too much … the tire wants to stop whenever it comes to a rock instead of absorbing and floating over the rock. I ended up with too little air in the tire but it didn’t show any tendency to climb the sides of the trail. I’ve run the Motoraptor with low air presser too with no problem.
I want to try the Big Apple with the wider Sun rim. The wider rim should give even more air volumn and maybe give the “floating” effect at a higher pressure. Also, it might change the profile of the tire enough that the “side climbing” problem will go away - if the tire profile is what causes it to do that in the first place!
Hopefully there’s a sweet spot where the air pressure will be low enough to float over the rocks but high enough that the tire tracks straight in a dished trail.
I wonder how the Apple would work on pure slickrock. I talked to a couple guys at Moab that claimed a fat slick tire (can’t remember what they were using) worked better than the Gazz because the adhesion was the same or better, and they didn’t have any issues with the outermost knobs bending when hopping sideways up steep slopes. Since you have the means to compare, it might be interesting to try them side by side at the next Moab fest (where I hope I’ll see you).
