Also remember there is absolutely nothing to stop you putting a 24 inch wheel in your 26 inch frame when you need a standard uni. The seat height is governed by the cranks not the wheel and the fork length is irrelevant as long as it clears the tyre.
Yes ok handn’t thought of that. That brings the price a lot down if I only buy an extra wheel.
On the other hand on http://municycle.com, I can also see the cheaper 24" unis are cheaper or the same price as just a wheel :
Since I don’t plan on doing serious training for competitions and because I’d use the bigger wheel sizes to go for bigger distance, a cheap 24" will suffice my needs. My bday is still 3 mths away, so I have enough time to make up my mind.
It is clear that everybody has different views and aims with their unicycles, but they are very helpful for me to find out what is important to me. The chance is big that I will add a 24" uni to my collection and however my mood is for the day, will prolly take it for a spin, like yesterday I rode the Hatchet, which I hadn’t touched in a few months. People already look funny when I ride through town on one wheel, but they seem more impressed by the fatty wheel even.
I have a 20 fatty, 20", 24muni, 26Muni, 26, 32, and 36. I haven’t been on the 24" yet. I find the 26" muni the most fun, and the larger sizes more challenging. So I’m staying with large. I don’t think I’ll go back to the 20", unless I’m riding it indoors. I did pack the 26" as luggage, but a 24" would have been easier, where I wouldn’t have had to take the tube & tire off the rim. I’d say no. But I do like the 24" wheel idea.
It’s a cross country rim, not unusually narrow. The trend with unicycle rims is that wider is better (not a bad thing), except you can’t put a 26x1" tyre on them.
The rims all take the same hubs.
Good idea with just building a new wheel- much cheaper option if you are unsure.
So if one day I got a Nimbus Hatchet 26 and wanted something more tuned to road work, I could just swap in a road wheel and rim on the frame instead of buying a new unicycle? Or is the Hatchet somehow too specialized to make that possible … or practical/sensible/whatever?
It has an extra-wide hub (125mm bearing pitch vs the standard 100mm), but otherwise yes.
Yep, you would need a wheel laced for it with the wide hub, as lightbulbjim said before me. But the nice thing about it, is that you could turn your Hatchet into a mean road uni. On the presentation page, it says you can fit up to a 32" wheel in there!
Great, thanks guys!
I had no idea it was that versatile.
It has definitely shot up another few rungs in my consideration of what I might buy if I find my 24 limiting. That won’t be for a long time, but I appreciate the help so I can get an understanding of these things.
In answer to the original question:
Of course! Not having a 24" wheel is like ignoring a big part of the legacy of commercially available unicycles, and the size used for basic uni-racing!
Historical perspective:
Once upon a time, unicycles mostly came in two flavors: 20" and 24". 16" wheels could be found, but they were rare and usually intended for kids too small for a 20". This of course may vary depending where you are from; Switzerland famously was doing unicycle racing on 26" wheels, Germany did “Group Standard Skill” (Kunst-Einradfahren) on 26" wheels also but for most of the world, if unicycles were available at all, they came in those basic sizes from the 1960s through 1990s.
Before the 1960s there were very few unicycles available that you could buy anywhere; and I know very little about what was actually available.
In the early 1970s in the United States, they started doing National Unicycle Meets. The competitions basically consisted of a series of races on an athletics track (or parking lot if no track available), and trick riding competitions, similar to what we now call Freestyle and Open-X. For the first several years they had race categories for both 20 and 24, but by 1978 or so it was just 24", with 20" reserved just for the younger kids.
This made life simple in terms of equipment; you needed one unicycle for racing, tricks and whatever else you were doing. This made it easier to add a giraffe, handlebar uni or other variations but rarely other wheel sizes, which would have to be handmade.
My formative years of unicycling were on 24" regular unis and 6’ tall giraffes. The 24" was the do-everything unicycle, great for tricks, and fun to ride fast on because you could usually run out of crashes at even your highest speeds. Remember, nobody was jumping off cars or riding down trails made of rocks, because the unicycles would just break. But we did ride on dirt, jump up and down bleachers, ride down sand dunes and otherwise find creative ways to break them anyway. In fact, if you look down that list of Things not to do, you’ll see a lot of 20" and 24" wheels, and some Schwinn Giraffes.
I love my old 24" Miyata. It was broken for many months after Unicon 18 (I had to find a replacement early 80s Miyata hub) and I really missed it. I did all of my Freestyle for the first three years on that size, and, years later, it was my first Muni.
The “Standard Track Unicycle” with the 24" wheel and 125mm cranks comes from that era. Actually it was originally 140mm (5.5") because that’s what came on the Schwinns. And we have stuck with those dimensions into the 21st century. the 618mm actual tire diameter limit is based on 24 and one-third inches, a size that was arbitrarily chosen for being “reasonably close to 24 actual inches, while allowing for some variations on various tires. We were aware at the time that this also allowed for skinny 26x1 wheels, which was also fine. They’re not that much bigger than a plain old 24 x 1.75” tire.
How come we still race 24" wheels when bigger ones are available?
Firstly we don’t; we use bigger sizes for almost every form of racing that’s outside the track. But why stick with an archaic (and increasingly irrelevant) smaller wheel size for the track? Apparently because people like that size. We tried introducing 700c racing (basically 29" wheels) a couple of times, and it never caught on. Maybe someday. Or maybe people like the simplicity, or being able to run out of a dismount at top speed.
What do I think about that wheel size?
I love the way it rides; that it’s great for cruising around while not being too big to stash easily in the car (or in a wide enough suitcase). I guess I also love how it connects me to my earliest days of unicycling, and all those uni competitions back in the day where I won lots of races. In many ways I think it’s the best wheel size for just riding around on, or going short distances.
Notice I’m not mentioning 24" Muni wheels here. I have one, on my trusty old Wilder. But it’s not really a 24" wheel; it’s almost 26". An actual 24" wheel would be a bit small for trails, IMHO. Now I have an even bigger 26" KH Muni. That tire is probably about 28.5". Nothing wrong with that either. But if you want to make an easy trail harder to ride, try it on a 24x1.75" uni with 60 pounds of pressure in the tire (you have to use that much, or risk pinch flats on the rocks). It’s great, challenging fun!
If you’re buying it for historical reasons then make sure it has cottered cranks and an uncomfortable saddle! 
I’ve not ridden on personally but I have a 19" and a 27.5" all I can say is that each of these has its virtues. I enjoy the large wheel for cruising around town but I still find the flickability of the small wheel to be very much fun. Also, when riding in pedestrian-heavy areas, or even in shopping malls (basically places where bikes are not allowed), I find the small wheel never gets looks of disapproval whereas the large wheel definitely would make some people feel uncomfortable. Smaller wheels are also much easier to carry on public transport without raising red flags. I think 24" is a happy middle ground between 19" and 27.5".
Thank John for that write-up. It was a fun read.
It was also nice to read a reaffirmation that my choice for a first unicycle of a 24 incher should bring me plenty of joy.
Mine is a muni, and the tire pressure says 15 to 35 PSI, so I went with a rule of thumb I saw of 1 PSI per 10 lbs of bodyweight and put it at 22 PSI for my 220.
It’s the Nimbus Oracle with a fat tire, so hopefully I find it does well on trails even though it’s not a big uni. At any rate, learning with a bigger uni than 24 when everyone seemed to recommend learning on a 20 struck me as maybe a bad idea, and I’ve seen others say 24 is great and understand Kris Holm did a ton of his stuff on a 24 too, so …
… anyway it’s nice to see people seeming to confirm that I’ll be giving the wheel plenty of use once I learn it.
I’d say the opposite. I consider 24" to be the unhappy medium between 20" and 26/27.5". Small enough to be pretty slow, and not really roll over a ton of stuff, while being to big and bulky for trials, or any serious kind of trick riding. I don’t know of a single good Muni rider who looks at a section of trail and wishes he had a 24" instead of the 26/27.5" he is riding right now. Likewise, with few noteable exceptions, almost no one who does trials, freestyle, flat or street wishes for a bigger wheel.
For me, if you are not racing, there is absolutely no reason to buy a 24" if you already have a 26" or 27.5". I can see it being a good learner for taller adults. But if you are deciding between a 24" and a 26"/27.5" as a Muni after you learned to ride, I’d 100% recommend the bigger wheel for adults.
To the extent that riders get used to what they are using, then you are correct. Also, the chance of a pedal strikes increases when moving down to the 24" from the 26" or 27.5". My sense is that, if improvements in weight and strength of materials had not been made, more people would still be doing muni on 24" unicycles. Individual riding styles need to be taken into consideration, also, not just what competitive racers are doing. For example, I hope to be riding muni into my old age, but I’m not going to be “bombing” down hills. For a slower approach to technical terrain, I think a smaller wheel has some advantages.
But I agree with your general point, finnspin. I tend to think of my 26" as my muni (setup with bar ends for longer rides), rather than my 24", and when it comes to freestyle/street/trials tricks, the 20" seems optimal. But I still enjoy riding my 24".
I think that is a good point. I wouldn’t really take my 19" to the mall, because it simply requires too much pedalling and I’d be sweaty in no-time. A 24" will be a bit more comfy and still small enough to cruise through town. I think with most uni’s they are easy to transport, though the 32 and 36" are starting to take up a lot of space when inside a my car. I can easily have my family in the car and my 29" muni. I often think I should just always have a uni in the car and use it where I have to walk somewhere. Im lazy enough to just take the uni 
I do have a few of those (meeting both criteria), but they just hang in my garage and are purely “historical” at this point. Except for my 45" wheel, which was made in 1982. Still going strong, in the occasional parade mostly, on its original hub!
That’s a great word, flickability. Perhaps the best one to describe why almost everybody uses 20" wheels for Freestyle. While you can use the extra mass & size of a 24" wheels to do some great spinny-type moves, the larger wheel makes anything “flicky” more difficult.
While that probably worked well for that wheel, don’t think of it as a rule. The biggest variable in “correct” tire pressure is tire fatness. Generally, the skinner it is, the more pressure you need. Fat tires can use tiny amounts of pressure. In the end, you want to have a good quality of ride while keeping your rim off the ground on the bumps and/or drops.
Yes, in his early videos you’ll see Kris Holm riding a 24" Schwinn (and little to no safety gear). Then around was his old Muni as well. But by late 1998, when he attended his first Muni Weekend, he already had a custom made frame & axle that he was experimenting with. That was probably a 26" wheel.
That would include me. When I got my 24" Wilder in 2003, 24" wheelsets were generally stronger than what was available for 26", and I think it was a common size for Downhill (bike) racing. But that has obviously changed a lot since then. I love my 26" KH, and it’s magical tire that’s so much lighter than anything I had on the 24"!
I do consider 24" to be a good size for riding in crowds of people, and used to do it a lot. 20" is a little less obtrusive, but it’s also slow.
I thought this bit from a review on a 24 would be interesting to bring up because I immediately thought of it when reading today’s posts in this thread. It’s just another viewpoint, I’m not putting it here to argue with you or anyone and am in no position to argue with anybody about uni’s – I only have the one and I can’t even ride it yet! – so please don’t take it that way. Like I say, I just thought it was another interesting viewpoint.
Maybe I’m just a chicken – in fact at this point I’m sure I am! – but I especially took note of that last part where he says it’s good for things that are beyond one’s ability. I thought, Hey, everything’s beyond my ability! So I think I picked a good learner, if nothing else. I’ll ramp up the challenges when and if I get to be a decent rider. It sounds like a lot of people learn in stages, starting small … or smallish, anyway. 24 is my small.
I also liked that he mentioned hill climbing again when he said, “has formidable climbing ability for steep uneven terrain.” I live in a very hilly area and will need all the help I can get. Formidable is something I could use!
Thanks! It’s going to be a good while until I figure out any kind of fine points on any of this. When I first got the uni out of the box, I think it was at 6 PSI, and even that felt firm. I’ll get things figured out sooner or later.
I would have used a PM (private message) instead of jacking this thread but Dingfelder doesn’t accept them.
Personally, I’d prefer at least few a more psi unless I’m riding over BIG roots, rocks or drops and I weigh 65 lbs less than you. But then I also prefer stiff sidewalls and don’t mind pushing a little extra weight around. I’ll usually run my fat tires around 28 psi when I’m doing timed events. I really dislike the tire folding under and will live with a more lively bouncing tire that increase the psi will deliver.
Many other unicyclist here like low pressure and light flimsy tires. You might become another one if that’s the thing you learn on and the only tire/psi you ever try.
JM
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1psi/10lbs body weight was a rule of thumb I saw in the early/mid 2000s, it’s a good starting point, and then figure out what works for you (I tend to go around 20psi on my 26" fatty and 24psi for my 24" muni).
I cut my muni teeth on a 24" Nimbus II/KH-Onza Frankenmuni. I replaced it a few years ago with a 26" Nimbus Oregon, but had to pull it out of retirement last summer when the Oregon frame cracked.
Oh. My. God. I had dearly missed it. With 165mm cranks, well, yes, I had to be more careful of pedal strikes on rocks, but the control and stability I had when hopping, the ability to go down hills even without a brake… I’ve missed it!
I’m taking the 24" with me on my Honeymoon next month, I thought about taking the 26", but between the size, the complexity of the hydraulic brake… I just want something simple and bomb proof. It’s not the fastest, and it doesn’t roll over everything a 26" does, but it’s still pretty damn versatile 