I don’t think people who aren’t unicyclists, and who call it ‘The Big One’ generally call it that because that’s what it’s actually named. It’s just because you have multiple unicycles, and when you say you’re going riding, they don’t think ‘on the trials or the coker’? they think ‘on the little one or the big one’?
just my $0.02 USD. (:
OK 36" is correct but you might as well say “well i have a 140mm hub 36 hole rime @ 34"ciameter with a tire that is numatic and 36” "
why make it a # Coker olny makes tires for the 36 tire and qu-ax is in many of hte other sizes any Refering to it as a coker is giving it and idenity not jsut hand me that 24 or 20 and 36
have funn
Sometimes my friends call it “The Bigone” (big-own) just cuz they are like that.
now that u mention that, i’m amazed that the term 'Big ‘Un’ hasn’t made the jump from Married With Children to the world of big wheel unicycling
Until very recently, using the name Coker made sense because no matter what you did with the cycle, the tire was a constant. And Coker is the tire company.
Now, with a second brand of 36" tire, the sensible thing to do would probably be to call them 36es. We ride 20s, 24s, 26s, 29s, and 36s.
But we are not always sensible. Until I at least see one of the new tires, in my head they will still be Cokers. Are the new tires made to fit the same rims? If so, they are following the dimensions established by Coker.
I do not know the full story of the Coker 36" tire and unicycle. I know the bikes came first. I am not sure the origin of that tire size.
I doubt it would be for a rickshaw, as it’s too small. Rickshaws are still used in Japan, mostly by tourists I think. We saw a lot of them around Asakusa, Tokyo, where we stayed after Unicon. They have 42" tires (one of which was used for the 100 mile record in 1987). http://unicycling.smugmug.com/gallery/322928/7/12834233 You would not manufacture a tire without being sure where it was supposed to go.
So we’re not sure if Coker originated their 36" tires for a specific project, or for their own products, which were one or more bicycles. The unicycle came after the bikes, and I would be fascinated to know the story behind that.
In the unicycling world, the Coker 36" wheel size popped up in 1998 with no precedent. Before that, there was nothing so big with a pneumatic tire. There were (and are) plenty of hard-tire big-wheels out there. The vast majority of what Tommy Miller made were 40" wheels, and mine is 45". Those are known as “big wheel unicycles.” Very scientific.
But Coker (36" air tire) is different. They are so much better for cruising on, for cranking out the miles, and for rougher terrain; places you would never take a hard-tire unicycle. So I would not lump them together with the old-school big wheels.
If we set up future races for those unicycles, they will probably be called 36" races. This is more because of a lack of involvement by Coker in promoting their unicycles. If they jumped on as sponsors, it would probably be called a Coker race (even though the Qu-ax tires should be allowed as well).
What we do currently is have “unlimited” races, where any size wheel is allowed. This keeps from excluding other ways to go fast, like geared giraffes, my old 45" wheel, or smaller wheels with micro-cranks. If there were a bigger audience for such races, there would probably be enough to do Coker-specific events as well.
So for me, I’m fine with calling it 36", but I’m also fine with referring to them as Cokers. Until we learn otherwise, Coker invented it.
I have emailed Coker Tire Co to ask about the history. I also asked them if 48 was in the planing. Not yet was the reply. Maybe we should spam them or just plead to get a 48 going.
i don’t think spamming counts as ‘good bussiness practise’ just yet
it might be worth starting a poll thread here asking people to indicate their interest in a pneumatic 48" and then sending that link to the people at Coker?
Thats what I sorta meant. I just get carried away!
Imagine a 48" Coker
kewl, so will u start the Poll Thread?
48" gets to a point where you need a cunning frame to avoid making it impossible to ride for a lot of people. If you put 6 inch cranks on it, you’d surely need a minimum of 31" inch inside leg to ride it as an ultimate wheel, or a bit more once you put a seat and seatpost on. You could make really thick platform pedals, a tiny seat, or make it a giraffe, but I’d be surprised if it would be as nice to ride as a coker with those compromises.
Joe
Good thread Gary.
I’d call any 36" unicycle a Coker.
Just like I Hoover with a Dyson, and my Selotape is actually ‘clear sticky tape’ from the newsagents.
I asked Roger the other week about Qu-ax Cokers, he knew what I ment.
I think we should keep the word Coker for 36" uni’s.
As for ‘Muni’, yeah, I believe it was Pashley who came up with the name. Could of even been Roger and/or Duncan C.
Joe,
does that mean that 36" is the best compromise size for a general all-round tourer
or have unicyclists simply gotten used to it because it’s been the only thing around?
It’s a good size because pretty much all adults can ride it. It also fits in a car boot okay, rides pretty fast, is very manouvrable, rides well in traffic.
A bit bigger might be nice, but personally I don’t see there being much point in going that much bigger as you start hitting the short people limit and reducing the number of people who can ride it. You also limit the offroad capability by increasing the height, the coker is already a bit limited in riding singletrack by head clearance, I wouldn’t want to be much higher.
A coker can go 100 miles in a day comfortably. If you want much more than that, it’s probably time to either get gears or a bike.
I think the cooler thing to do would be to try to get people to make different tyres for the 36" wheel, like a winter offroad tyre to stop it being so slippy in the mud. I don’t know if Qu-Ax have considered this at all, they’d be the obvious people to try and get this done.
I have a suspicion that once people get used to riding them, the best all round tourer may well be a Schlumpf, with the 42" gear and the 29" technical offroad / knackered at the end of the day gear. Given a lot of people seem to want super expensive upgraded cokers, the price of the Schlumpf doesn’t seem that much in comparison. I can’t wait for mine!
Joe
Pashley were the first to use “Muni” on a product. I believe Duncan Castling gets credit for coining the word.
Joe Marshall had a good point on the 48" wheel. It’s one thing to be tall enough to fit a certain wheel size. It’s a much more problematic thing to have a 48" unicycle that can adjust to fit any kind of size range of people without multiple seat posts. There just isn’t anywhere for the post to go. So a 48" unicycle would be harder to sell than a 36", and they don’t sell that many 36s in the first place. So I can understand a reluctance to add a second wheel size.
Especially if they’re not in a hurry to make more 36" tires at the moment, as inventory seems to have run out for most vendors!
A 42" wheel, or similar, gives you a little more leeway, though it still has the problem of being a second wheel size, and still harder to fit a wide range of people than the 36".
That said, I have a 45" wheel in my garage, and it automatically goes faster than a Coker. It just doesn’t have any air in the tire, so you wouldn’t want to ride it any kind of long distance if you had a choice. My seat has three adjustment holes (Schwinn style), so there’s some leeway on seat height while still fitting me. For bigger wheels you’ll just need to expect to cut your post I think.
36" is not big enough. Call me spoiled. If wheel size is our gear, we deserve bigger gears. A geared hub is great, but its advantages (like smaller and lighter) come with disadvantages (harder to ride). Bigger wheels are very visual and graceful. A bigger Coker-type wheel will be pretty heavy though. I’d prefer a skinnier tire, something more in the 1.75 range.
Bigger wheels do look lovely. But for touring, I’m not convinced that a bigger gear is all that needed. Unless you’re spinning out on a coker with 110s or 102s all the time then I don’t see such an advantage in making the wheel so big, increasing the weight, decreasing the manouvrability + accessibility.
The other big thing is that presumably a bigger wheel with narrower tyre would be strictly a road uni, which again reduces the amount of riding you can do on it.
I’ll get back to you on whether geared hubs are much harder to ride than cokers after I’ve ridden a thousand miles or so. Has anyone actually put in significant distance on a geared hub uni yet? Frank Bonsch?
Joe
John, are you saying that the larger direct-drive wheels are NOT harder to ride? IMHO, the bigger the wheel, the more difficult it is to ride, regardless of whether the largeness comes from physical size or gearing. To me, an equivalently-geared wheel feels very much like the physically larger wheel, save for maneuverability and tire differences.
I very much disagree. I never felt like I could let me mind go while riding my 26/39er (currently being rebuilt into a 36/54er)
Riding a coker for me can be totally mindless. As soon as I spaced out on the 26/39er, I was running like hell with my unicycle 30 feet behind me.
Do you have experience with geared smaller wheels? If so, I’m interested in finding out if you find them easier or harder than your geared 36er.
Hey Mike; I’ve demo’d Schlumpf’s 24" x 1.5, and BlueShift’s 29" x 1.5. To me, the geared 24" felt like a 36 in terms of roll, but still maneuvered like a 24. BlueShift in 1.5 mode (=43") feels faster than a direct-drive coker (as it should), and also handles easier, but not such a difference as the 24. Purple Phaze geared in 1.56 (=56") feels like a 56, but to me once you get to a 36 wheel, the handling difference between that and the Effective Wheel Diameter is less pronounced. Even the 29" wheel is some 23% less circumference than a 36.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been able to “zone out” on Purple Phaze at 1.56 on a smooth level bike trail, cruising at 10-12mph. To me there is very little effort at all required to ride those speeds, but on the other hand it’s also more difficult to ride at below 10 on the geared wheel because the cadence gets so low. Mind you that’s with 175mm cranks too.
Coker reply
Corky (Corky Coker that is) is away until next week. No one else at Cokers knows the history. We just have to wait. The 48 is not on the drawing board. It was just my idea to ask them.
Here’s a thread that touches on the history of the Coker unicycle: How old is Coker?.
It seems that the tire was made for their Monster Cruiser bike. A beech cruiser style bike with big wheels to attract attention and possibly attract attention to the Coker Tire name. Then Guy Hansen discovered the Monster Cruiser and its unique wheels. He decided they would make a great wheel for a unicycle and made a custom unicycle with that wheel. He saw it was good. Coker saw it was good. The rest is history.
I originally thought that the tire may have been for an old 1890’s ear steam car, but that is not correct. It seems the tire was made specifically for their Monster Cruiser bike and is not an antique or classic tire at all.