Would the nimbus road be able to go on hiking trails?
Everything is the same except for tire and cranks.
Is the Drak’s tire lower quality…? since both unis are the same price, while on the drak, I could get venture2 125 cranks, while if I did that on the road, it’d cost another $50.
I was therefore thinking of getting the Drak with venture2 125mm cranks, so I can use on both medium commutes and some bike trails… Is that sound? or would the road with Qu-ax 125mm cranks be a better choice?
Of course you can take the road uni on trails - 125 cranks are a bit short for off-road for most people’s preferences, but it’s certainly possible with them. It all depends what your hiking trails are like - if they’re reasonably smooth and not too steep then you should be OK (I’m assuming here you don’t have much experience of muni). The road tyre will even work OK if it’s dry.
As for the tyre on the muni, nothing wrong with the quality of that, it’s just down to hitting a price point, so you’re possibly getting better value with the Drak.
You seem to have stumbled into a pricing anomaly… You could buy the Drak with the cranks you like AND add a Schwalbe Big Apple for less than $50. You’d end up with TWO tires.
UDC’s 29 BA on their site is the 2.0 and not the 2.35 but for road riding that might be better. I love my Schwalbe Marathon Supreme 29x2.0 for quiet smooth rolling road riding.
As aracer noted most people would think 125’s are short for Muni. You could try and sweet talk UDC into switching out the cranks for some dual holes. They may have some older KH Moments (not disc ready) that would be a similar value. Worth asking.
Or the old Nimbus Venture cranks are on sale. Get a second set of them for $25. They are industrial design- I think they are cool- and very strong.
I have the old ones on my trials uni (because they were cheap and I’m a tightwad). I’ve done 2 ft drops on that and don’t suppose I’ll go much bigger - I doubt I’ll have a problem.
This ↑, I’ve got the Drak as standard currently and it’s more than capable for the 3 or so mile commutes I’ve been doing with my son to school. The next plan is to get a less extreme tyre like a Continental X-King and some 127/150 Spirit cranks which should (hopefully) make it a jack of all trades!
I have a Drak and love it. I contemplated buying the road version and use an old mountain bike tire on the road uni. In the end I figured I wouldn’t use the Big Apple enough. I ordered my Drak with the “KH ISIS 165mm” cranks and it came with Moments (this was right before Christmas). I called unicycle.com USA and asked if I could step up to the Spirits when I bought the Drak and they said no. If you would rather have the Dissent or the Ardent tire I would call them and specify that. I learned to ride a unicycle on the Drak and have been riding some fairly technical trails. I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of falls and this uni hasn’t had any problems.
