I’m not sure how much is gyroscopic effect, but you really can notice the difference in turning ability between a large or heavy wheel and a small one. A 36er vs a trials uni is just night and day when it comes to turning.
IMHO, you’re partly wrong. It is probably overestimated on small wheels (< 29") but you can really feel it on a 36er. Having ridden my Oracle 36er for years and then going to a carbon rim has been a massive improvement for acceleration and turns. I hadn’t seen the same improvement when I got my 29er carbon rim.
2 Likes
I think the real question is not about rims because there a hundreds of references available in the MTB world to make everybody happy without burdening the uni brands. It is about the availability of hubs with hole counts different from 36! This is where uni brand shine: on uni-specific parts that enable things.
It is not reasonable to expect fancy off-the-factory unis. But having parts opening up opportunities for custom builds is a win-win (choice for customers and limited risk for brands and inventory management for shops).
2 Likes
Yes there are. I used to ride my MTB very frequently but stopped it almost completely. One point is that muni is more fun for me, but the other is that my bike requires much more maintenance. Also, I experienced my bike tubeless setup to add to this: I still got flats which where not sealed by the milk, and half a year later had forgotten to refill this darn stuff and got a flat on a tour just because my tire was running dry and loosing air at the rim. So I will keep it easy on my muni and run a tube, I am happy with it.
1 Like
That is for a wheel which is moving already. On acceleration, shouldn’t you take moment of inertia into account?
E_rot = 0.5 * I * w^2
With I = m * r^2 (simplyfied!) as mass of inertia and r: wheel size, m: wheel weight, w: angular acceleration
So wheel size has a big impact on energy you need to accelerate, and so does the grade of acceleration (but also braking with your legs). Plus the energy of the not rotating parts, like your body. I think you will feel the wheel to be lighter and more responsive, but moving around a corner or accelerating from still stand is dominated by your body weight, so I absolutely agree with @finnspin there.
Another important aspect of the MUnis is the inertia of the system. This can definitely be positive. I’ve tried a lot of things, from 300g tires to 2kg tires.
Sure, a light bike is much more agile, but it can tend to react more nervously if you e.g. going over a branch that is across the path than a setup with more weight/inertia that reacts much more sluggishly and you roll over the obstacle better. I find a certain sluggishness positive and I’m less thrown off the unicycle, for example. at potholes that I didn’t see.
1 Like
I think lighter wheels are often preferred more by experienced riders - the increased agility does typically make riding on uneven surfaces more difficult, but provides a whole different riding experience.
I used to love my Duro Wildlife 24" as it would ride over and through almost anything.
These days I prefer to have a lighter wheel, and ride around, hop over, or otherwise avoid mud and obstacles that I’d previously have attempted to just throw myself at.
On 27.5" and larger, I think the decreased wheel mass makes less of a difference to the rollover ability, and the minimum mass of such a wheel is probably still enough to not end up super twitchy, even with a carbon rim.
1 Like
That’s where the first part of the equation comes from in the first place.I inserted omega and I already (we know v=w*r for a rolling wheel).
Sorry I derailed this thread slightly… I’m very willing to admit that there are some oversimplifications that I am making with that math, just for balancing reasons the wheel moves more than the body, and for muscle fatigue where the mass is also matters (weight on the body gets controlled by almost all of your muscles, while moving the unicycle engages less muscles).
It’s very possible that different riding styles and riders would have an exaggerated effect, because they move the wheel around a lot more. (Especially if you “twist” instead of “corner”).
But I think placebo effects and changing other things while also changing wheel weight is always a possible explanation too. Especially if you change tire, there is usually different tread, compound, sidewall stiffness, pressure, all of which have a massive impact on how the wheel feels.
Of course. I would expect if there is anybody explicitly trained in engineering working for any interest that generates income from selling unicycles its an accident and they are in the industry because they are small business owners or whatever but not explicitly employed as engineers. That’s why I referred to “accounting and marketing impulses”–it’s all the same handful of ppl who are generalists covering every aspect of bringing products to market. KH is a geologist and does KH Unis on the side–it’s not even his primary employment, it’s a side hustle or a hobby! But he still makes engineering, marketing, accounting, sales, etc. decisions, or somebody does on his behalf… And we can talk about what motivates those decisions…
It’s kind of a neat aspect of the uni world. It’s not corporate. KH, Rodger, etc come on here and comment occasionally. When does that happen over at MTBR? Does Mike Synyard participate on MTBR? But it’s also why there are some eccentricities like the foot dragging on tubeless. Small sample sizes do not reliably represent large populations. If the industry were larger like the bicycle industry it would have followed the obvious path toward tubeless standards. Flame on!
1 Like
Agreed, I’m not sure how much is gyroscopic and how much is any other identifiable inertial effect but my experience is that lighter = more fun! It might even turn out to be a disadvantage in certain circumstances, I can imagine that. But we aren’t unicycling because it’s an especially efficient means of transport! I often unicycle because it’s an especially inefficient means of transport, hence great exercise even putting around town running errands! In the final analysis it’s always fun! Except for saddle sores!
1 Like