If you want your tires to work anywhere close to the way they were designed, I wouldn’t put anything under a 2.5" on a 55mm rim, and even that is a stretch… Ideally, the tire is the only part of a unicycle that touches the ground, so I think it is worth it to optimize it’s performance. Unicycles tend to choose a bit wider rims than bikes (mostly for a more stable feel I think), but I’m certain there is a point where it is pushing it too far.
They anodize their rims in Italy, and the labour costs of having eyelets installed there is too expensive. Personally, I don’t really care about eyelets too much, they don’t really increase surface area of the nipples too much and if you want them to prevent seizing or for extra piece of mind, you can buy washers for that.
I personally think a light wheel will have the advantage once you are used to it, but personally I don’t find it a massive advantage. (But then again, I subscribe to the theory of the touchpoints being the most important parts of a unicycle. Tire, pedals, handle/seat setup, brake, I’d rather ride a heavy uni with those dialed in than a light one with them not perfect).
Extra rotational momentum of the wheel will be fairly negligeable when you compare that to the momentum of the body/rest of the unicycle. Our wheels don’t spin that fast, so the difference of rotating mass vs. not rotating mass is not huge.
I hadn’t thought about that. The eyelets are installed post-anodizing.
My experience with eyelets vs no eyelets is that nipples are easier to turn. The eyelet also prevents the nipple from carving into the aluminium. I’ve never used nipple washers, but I imagine eyelets are better because they shield all faces of the spoke hole.
My experience off road is that a bigger or heavier wheel rolls better in a straight line. The momentum helps carry you through the dead spots at 6/12 and a larger wheel rolls over bumps more easily. A big part of muni though is making sharp turns on the trail in order to avoid obstacles, stay on the track or follow a line down some tricky terrain. For that smaller and lighter is better. When I ride my 36er offroad it does great, until I have to turn.
I can suggest to use a tire insert if you are interested in a dampening wheel. I ride a carbon 36er, tubeless, the wheel is too much responsive when riding offroad and I find a gamechangher using a Victoria airliner tire insert. Now those hateful bald rocks won’t through me flying even if I approch them at a considerable speed (I cannot slow down too much with 125 cranks at rocky trail or my legs will cry when accelerating, slowing down, accelerating again at every rock every meter!)
How do you like that carbon 36er off road? Does it compare favorably to a smaller wheel?
For me, a 36er is really good on pavement, but once you have the tire inflated to 50 psi or so where it rolls and turns well, then it doesn’t bounce for $hit. I like 36ers, but I like them for the same reason I like other unicycles, because they’re challenging and 36ers are at the fast and awkward end of the spectrum.
Right now I can use a 19" or a 36" so I cannot ride a 29". With the carbon 36" tubeless at 45 PSI it is a road machine, it can climb hilly road, accelerate and stop fast (maybe like a KH 29). At 30PSI that tire cannot support fast uphill climb (it will collapse to achieve more grip and the rim will cut the tire) and stand strange bumps or rock without risking the rim. At 45 PSI every solid bump makes me fly if I commit a bit. I never tested it tubed so I cannot speak about a Foss Tube vs a tire insert. I just know that with the insert it is a little slower accelerating, but it is completely different on roots or bald rocks (like the difference you feel riding off a curb with a 20"x2" vs a 29"x3"… the lattest is far more easy)
I use a 2.1" tire on my KH 55mm (drilled) rim. I run the tire at close to 40 psi, and after a lot of riding in mixed conditions, I only have small gashes on the rim. If, however, I ran the tire at lower pressure, that’d be a problem.
Try taking a look at building the wheel yourself possibly then? I ended up doing this with my mom is 29" road and it’s still a pretty capable machine. If you get a rim that’s 30mm internal with some light weight spokes and a good comply hub you can adapt your ride as needed. The frame for a MUNI and a road uni are pretty similar so as long as you have the right tire clearance you could have a muni and road tire that you swap as needed with some crank options. I honestly found that having different cranks has factored more into riding various terrain than the 2 unis I have. It would also let you have 1 base uni that you can swap around as needed.
This is in reply to the comment that your unsure of the ride you want. Generally the lighter weight wheel will be more nimble, a better climber, accelerate and decelerate easier meaning you can make quick adjustments to your riding path, and if you want to add weight to it then add a bottle cage with some water to the uni or throw on a cheap tire. I was unsure of the ride I wanted to do as well when building my uni so I ended up with a fairly well rounded uni that takes a 2.25 Raceking tire that allows me to do light uni but isn’t bad for road riding I primarily do.
Is there any good reason why they moved to 55mm? The new rim appears to be lighter overall, I wonder if it would have been better to keep it 47mm but using the new design principles.
I need to ask mad4one how much their unicycle will cost if I supply the rim. Their components cost a lot more when bought separately than when you buy one of their complete unicycles.
The 3.25" tire performs very well on that rim, and I’d guess they wanted to move towards that tire. They’ve been going slightly bigger everytime they choose a new tire for the last few iterations. While it feels too wide for my taste, for most riders it’s really an amazing choice - not quite fat-uni, so still not super floaty feeling and turns okay, but also you can run fairly low pressure and let the tire handle the terrain.
Thanks for the correction. I have a 2.1" tire on a 47mm rim. 55mm with the same tire could be a deal-breaker. For example, slipping off the edge of a curb could gash the rim.
I like wider rims in principal. To my non-engineering mind, the tire is less likely to wobble left and right or fold. And you could run a lighter tire without rigid sidewalls. I might be wrong.
The last two are basically the same rim. The Dominator2 (which is currently out of stock anyway) obviously must be beefier since it’s heavier. Does anyone have experience with either of these or both? Will the lighter rims be strong enough? I’m also a bit concerned about those 55mm rims because the side wall lip is very narrow compared with the Dominator2 or the mad4one rims.
One consideration is the fatter rim limits tyre choice. And a 3.25" tyre tends to be very pricey where I am (in Australia).
So my suggestion is to check the price of tyre options in your country and tyre availability.
It can help you decide as you may be able to find a lighter or cheaper rim other places. I found CRC and eBay tended to have a good selection of the local shops were out
For some reason udc doesn’t give us internal rim width, so you have to substract a few mm each side for that. With mad4one rims (they give you all the measurements) that is ~7mm, so you might just barely be in “compatible” territory on that chart.
If 2.5" is your target tire size, that is not the rim for it…Why do you want the 2.5" tire? If it is rolling resistance, selecting a faster rolling tire is always a possibility (within reason of course). A 3.0" tire with a milder thread pattern and faster rolling compound will feel a lot faster than a 2.5" in full downhill spec.
Good point. It just seems 2.5" tyre availability is less of a problem especially ATM. They are also cheaper and, all things being equal, lighter. Would a milder tread be ok on trails? I don’t plan on doing gnarly muni like you see on YouTube.
3" is great for general purpose trail riding, and there are quite a few options (at least compared to 3.25"). There’s a reason it’s the default choice on most off-the-shelf munis. Probably the only time you might really need a narrower, heavier tyre is if you are doing extreme downhill.
I recently went from a 2.35" tyre (Hans Dampf) on a 33mm rim to a 3" tyre (Nobby Nic) on a 50mm rim. The 3" is basically just better at everything offroad, which translates to more fun. Although it’s probably a bit heavier than my old wheel (I haven’t weighed them) it’s not noticeable, and it’s more than nimble enough on dirt. I haven’t found any downsides.
