I’ve been practising with my 19" trial uni for a while. Eventually I’d like to get a large wheeler but as I recently had a try on my friend’s 36er, I don’t think I’m quite capable to ride it yet. So I purchased an used KH26 and try to start from there.
I’m living in a plain city, there aren’t any mountain/hills nearby, so as far as I understand that the KH26 is a great muni, I’d like to swap the tire out for something easier to ride on the paved road. I’m here to search for suggestions on such tires, because with a brief search I find most 26" road tires are rather narrow, I’m afraid they won’t fit in the KH’s rim.
Any help is appreciated!
Edit: I’m listing some candidates which I may be able to get here:
Try a Schwalbe Fat Frank. It will fit on a wide rim and rolls pretty nicely. You often find them on cruiser style bikes. I actually have one on my own 26er for road riding. Seen here
Oh and they are offered in a few colours. So if you don’t fancy creme you can go with brown, grey (though that one might have been phased out) and the classic black.
Edit: and black with white walls as well… if you are into that sort of thing.
There are a couple of other Schwalbe that might be interesting, including the Big Apple and Pick-Up.
Others that I have stumbled across that should fit a fairly wide rim include CST Brooklyn Pro and Continental Contact Travel. If you do want a little more “off-road” grip, while retaining fairly low rolling resistance, perhaps Maxxis Holy Roller or Duro Berm Master.
P.S. I should add that, unlike the Fat Frank I have not actually tried any of these on a unicycle, though I have ridden Big Apples on bikes before. However I think a few people here might have tried the Big Apple (29 inch version) and I seem to recall a couple of fans of the Holy Roller. Take some of these names and search the forums for more thoughts and suggestions.
One of my favourite wheels is a Nimbus 26 inch . It is about 10 mm narrower than the KH. I run it with a Maxxis DTH 26 x 2.15 foldable bead. This is a very light tyre that rolls very well on hard surfaces.
I think this would be a bit too narrow for a KH rim. However there is also a 26 x 2.3. I recon the extra little bit bigger would work on the wider KH rim.
I still have the KH rim with an off road tyre. Both wheels are complete with cranks, Nimbus Venture 114 on the road and KH Moment 125/150 for the off road wheel. I can swap between them in a couple of minutes.
Edit: They also have some 26 Conti RIDE Cruiser balloon tyres at a pretty low price (CHF19.90 = €20.61 / $20.59 / £18.09), which look potentially interesting.
These kinds of tyres do add a lot of weight. That can be ok, in that the rolling mass is sufficiently high that the wheel does not get slowed so easily by bumps and hence helps stablity. However it is more tiring over distance and up hill. Plus, some of these tyres including the aforementioned “Beach Bum” have serious issues with camber in my experience. So these these days I tend to take it down just a notch and generally go with 26x2.35 (i.e. the Fat Frank).
That said, I do still have a 26X3.0 (74-559) “Super Brick” named for the “brick” style pattern (a.k.a. Innova “City Tire” [IA-2236]), which I still sort of like. Perhaps a bit heavy still up hill (although noteably lighter than the Beach Bum) but it rolls well, supports 65PSI and does not have a major problem with camber. At least not like the “Beach Bum”, which was terrible.
I ride this tire on my 29er, road and packed limestone bike trails. Center has light tread sides grip if you need it. I run mine 35 lbs. The 29er tire is slightly wider.
If memory serves the 26 KH had a 47 mm wide rim. I think the rim on my 26er is 42mm. 5mm difference, which is close enough. It should be absolutely fine.
For further evidence, my URC 24 inch uni has a 46mm rim. Sometimes I ride it with CST 24x1.95 C-1383 (53-507) Swing, which is obviously quite a bit less than 2.35
Good to know! Does that mean even 2.2 tires are worth considering? Because I just saw a few colorful BMX tires (e.g. GT BMX LP-5) which could look interesting on the KH.
/ £18.09), which look potentially interesting.