I’ve had my setup for nearly one week. Offroad and onroad, the thing is amazing! I hit 20mph down some fireroads yesterday. I’ll try to make complete write up at some point. I had to modify the frame (grind out the bearing holders), but it works quite well.
As with normal 29ers/36ers, it depends on the crank lengths. On Thursday Mike Scalisi and I were riding in Castle Valley, Moab, Utah, on an extremely straight and gradually downhill road. Mike was on his v54 (original Harper hub in a 36" AirFoil) with 152mm cranks, and I was on a KH/Schlumpf 29er with 125mm cranks. The speeds were pretty comparable; one of us would go for a burst of speed and get ahead of the other, but wouldn’t be able to create much of a gap, and then the other would come around and pass. We were cruising at 18+ MPH and probably bursting above 20 MPH. I was wearing Mike’s GPS watch, but really didn’t want to look at it when I was going that fast.
The two unis behave somewhat differently on different terrain, but I would have to say they were pretty close to comparable in speed; maybe a very slight edge to the v54.
That depends on the terrain and the rider. I’m probably more conservative than Chuck or Corbin when it comes to trying stuff that looks dangerous. There was at least one section of bumpy downhill single track that I think Corbin flew down while geared up. I believe each of us had less than 5 hours of riding experience a piece on our respective setups. We only road offroad on Saturday, so it’s hard to say which was faster overall. We stopped and played a lot.
I tend to believe that geared up 36ers are faster than geared up 29ers on any road that one can fearlessly ride a geared up 36er on. However, because a geared up 36er is such a high gear, it is more limited in what is fearless for the high gear.
The reason I picked a geared 29er over 36er is that geared up 29er is ideal for any road that doesn’t have a steep climb, and standard 29er is ideal for any type of XC MUni riding and the really steep climbs near my home. Also, I’ve found that right around where I live, my 29er geared up is about as much as I can push on the “flat” roads that are actually filled with small rolling hills.
If I lived in a typical flat place though, I think a geared 36er might be more ideal.
I had a fall on an original Schlumpf at 16+. I didn’t manage to run out, but I rolled and came up with just minor scrapes. It’s nothing like crashing on a bike, or on a MUni for that matter.
Sure, these are all speed-capable machines. But sometimes it’s nice to just float along in overdrive at “regular” speeds but with a lower cadence. Makes the ride nicer I think.
Corbin, how is your tire clearance side to side with the frame?
When I modified my Nimbus frame for the Geared hub the clearance is to close now for my magura brakes to fit without hitting the rim when riding
Yep, it feels so good. I rode for two hours this afternoon, and it felt much more like two hours on a bike than two hours of spinning too much with very little pedal pressure required. Before it was that my joints and sit bones would get tired of sitting and spinning, but now it’s just the good burn of my worked out muscles that I feel.
