Bike Hugger 

I’m not a fan of 650B, but Rivendell promotes it, and with them go my wool knicker retro romanticist friends at Hiawatha Cyclery.

I don’t think it’s all marketing.  Newer road bikes barely tolerate 700x28mm slicks, but with a new wheelset, you can squeeze fatter tires into a frame without losing any effective wheel diameter, turning your old road bike into a advancing-age friendlier cruiser.  Of course you’ve almost spent as much as you would on a new bike, but it’s on a bike you ostensibly know and already love.

Of course there were millions of wheels made to the 27” standard, and we know where that went, until demand surged this summer.

For anyone out there thinking about converting their 700C road bike to 650B, double check that the stays and fork have the lateral tire clearance to fit the fatter tires.  Most of my bikes do not.  Also keep in mind that you automatically require different brake calipers.  And if your bike has cantilevers, forget it.

I don’t know much of anything about 650B—seems ok, in some applications, and there was a lot of early buzz as companies began to adopt the size…but for longevity’s sake I have my doubts.

As for freewheels, what about the excellent IRD “Defiant” models?  Sure, there aren’t any tight-ratio “corncobs” in the lineup, but there are several decent choices for moderately-fast tourers.  Still, I’d like to see a 12-23 6 speed (at least).

Interesting take on 650B. I wouldn’t quite write it off as a wheel size myself. There are just too many folks outside of the U.S.A. that use the standard. I think that as long as there is a Rivendell, Velo Orange, or a small custom market force (ie: Kirk Pacenti) that there will be an element of 650B in the U.S.A. as well.

That said, from a mainstream, retail perspective, I think you are correct. Major distributors will not find it profitable to carry an inventory of 650B specific items in these times. If the bigger distributors won’t get behind it, then this will be a blow to the proliferation of the wheel size amongst cyclists.

Also, as long as bigger, or even second tier companies, (Haro not with standing) don’t get behind it, this too will severely limit 650B’s spread amongst the common cyclists.

Finally, I have always believed that most retail bicycle shops won’t get behind 650B because they can barely fathom 29"ers, and having more SKU’s isn’t in the cards. Especially in the days of “dictated inventory levels” by the big three bicycle companies. (A story for another time)

Conclusion? 650B won’t be going away. Heck, it has been around for 60 years or more anyway. However; it will never be more than a niche, a curiosity, and an “under the radar” faction in the over all fabric of the cycling world.

I suspect 650Bs aren’t going anywhere soon but they also aren’t suddenly going to be everywhere. They do have a niche following and people who have the capability to produce products to meet that niche demand. This does mean limited choices, but still choices. Will Performance and Nashbar suddenly start carrying them? No, but a long as Rivendell, Velo Orange, Bicycle Quarterly are evangelizing and bringing product to market, I suspect they will remain an option.

here’s a clue.

650b rim makers:

Stan’s, Sun, Velocity,Alex, Weinmann,American Classic,Rigida,WTB

and pretty much any other rim maker who get’s a PO for this size will roll them.

650b tire makers:

Rivendell, Panaracer, Gran Bios, Schwalbe, Mitchelin, WTB, Kenda, Pacenti, Nokian, IRD

it’s amusing that someone called the ‘bike hugger’ is anti bike in any of its forms. shouldn’t the bike hugger be “embracing” all things bike, in all their forms? allowing for the fact that all people don’t see things your way? live and let live, eh?

cherrio,

tk

@Troll Killer,

To differentiate ourselves as bloggers and bike huggers, we don’t just accept what the industy does with fluff pieces and 5 yellow jersey reviews. It’s our self-appointed role to tough love or sometimes hate on products—ever sold a bar on eBay and endured the *how is it measured* question or traveled with a stupid seat mast bike or worse have the seat fall off your stupid seat mast during a ride?

I’m sure discussions just like this occur in bike shops over 29ers and 650B—or this even [bigger wheel size](http://bikehugger.com/2007/09/when_29_isnt_enough_36_inch_bi.htm). What is cool [is Big Apples](http://bikehugger.com/2007/07/big_tires_and_even_bigger_whee.htm) and if you’ve followed us for very long, [Hed’s C2](http://bikehugger.com/2009/01/huggacast_85_hed_wheels.htm) platform.

To the retro-romanticists, hey cool with me if you wear wool everywhere ( I travel in a complete wool ensemble), but the Handbuilt Bike Show and the custom-basket crowd isn’t where the growth is in this industry, sport, and lifestyle. The last thing the manufacturers need to so is confuse the customer with another wheel size. I was asked recently what the industry could do to significantly grow cycling—to move the needle—and I said join forces and bring affordable tubeless commuter wheelsets to market. Why don’t we have those now? Imagine how that’d help people ride their bikes to work and for errands.

Or even better, build safety features into the frames, like lights, crumple zones. And the reason they don’t do that now, is? Consumers are genuinely worried about riding in traffic and what if a bike designer took that topicn to task and designed a new **safety bike** with tubeless wheels, built-in lights, a horn, mirrors. Shit, maybe that’s what we should do as our next bike project.

@Ghostrider

to spell it out explicitly, IRD freewheels suck.  I end up doing way too many warranties to Merry Sales for those things.  How I miss the days of Sachs freewheels.  I hate selling products to customers if I think there’s a good chance for the stuff to come back with problems.

@troll killer

Clarification on some things.

On 650B tire manufacturers, the first three you mentioned are all actually made by the same company (National aka Panaracer) and I believe that 1 or 2 of the others is also National.  And if you double check the rim manufacturers, I think you’ll find a similar situation.  And I’m not sure having a variety of SKU#s is a good thing when inventories aren’t deep.

Working in retail, I want reliable product to be readily available, I want to be able to repair or replace worn out or broken components, and I want the customer to have the option of upgrading in the future.  I get the whole non-conformist aspect of 650B, but I hate the idea that individual consumers are jumping into the trend without knowing the whole picture.

I’ve ridden 650b and while I don’t think it’s the second coming the way some do I do think it fills a nice niche. Yes, it’s a small market but so are recumbents, mini bikes, trials bikes, time trial bikes, track bikes, etc., etc. I think there will be a big enough market for someone to place a large enough order to justify a production run of rims and tires.

If I were a brick and mortar retailer I’d absolutely not sell them. Way too niche a product to occupy precious floor space. Running a shop is hard enough as it is - why bother with products that have ridiculously low turn rates and margins when you could fill that same floor space with socks (which are WAY more profitable!)

As for getting more people into cycling, I think your idea is heading in the right direction though I also think you’re missing one HUGE component: distribution. Even if the bike you suggest were made it would do little to help cycling if it were only sold in bike shops. Non-cyclists have no reason to go into bike shops. By the time they step into a shop they are at some level already converted. To make non-cyclists into cyclists you have to catch them where they shop. What you need is a bike similar to what you propose but sold in a place like Target. Bike shops naturally cringe at this idea and make up lame excuses about how bad that would be. They claim people at Target wouldn’t know how to fit riders or don’t have the skill to assemble the bikes. Wrong on both counts. For starters, these bikes wouldn’t be sold to serious riders so fit isn’t that important. Keep in mind Target sells shoes which are arguably more fit dependent than a bike aimed at casual riding. For this sort of bike and rider a precise fit isn’t really required. As for assembly, who says a bike has to be assembled before being sold? Why not make the bike so it can go from the factory to the floor without the added labor (and cost) of assembly? They seem to be able to do that with TVs, computers, and home theater systems - all of which are way more complicated than a bike. Wouldn’t be that hard to make a bike which required minimal, tool free assembly before being rolled out onto the floor.

Finally, you need to make the bike maintenance free. I’ve had my Toyota for 3 years and other than an oil change and putting some air in the tires once a year it requires ZERO maintenance. Even a fairly simply bike requires more upkeep than that. People won’t ride bikes until they have the same level of reliability as a Honda or Toyota car. A belt drive or chain case would be a big step in the right direction. Tubeless tires are another good idea.

Having ridden many a 700C and now a 650B as my main road bike, I have nothing but great things to say:  comfort, stable handling, options for sizing, fenders, etc.  The mass market that’s hell-bent on the reign of a super skinny road tire with hard-as-hell pressure is not a market that will transform the bicycle from what it is for most people now, a toy.  650B offers the best of road manners and (potential) options for much more diverse riding, including city riding, country riding and commuting.  Maybe it won’t be the next big thing.  In fact, I doubt that seriously.  But communities with high ridership aren’t just filled with plastic-clothed recreational riders on skinny tires.  Instead, there is a panoply of rider types, and 650B will fit in with that.  You’re not a bike hugger; you’re a bike hater.

@TW

You make it sound as if fat and/or knobby 700C and skinny 26” don’t exist; in fact, they are legion.  I’ve ridden all kinds, and they work great.  650B isn’t going to make it possible to ride anywhere you couldn’t ride already with more established (or “mainstream” if you must) standards, and I think it’s daft to push 650B on new cyclists without any caveats. 

Skinny tire road bikes that are single-natured in use are the design of the bike frame/fork, not an inherent issue with 700C. 

You know what I’d like to see?  More 26” (as in “mtb” or ISO 559) road/touring bikes.  When I sell those, I have no regrets because I know that that customer is golden when it comes to rims, tires, and tubes.  There’s just oodles of options, orders of magnitude greater than 650B.  Even if 650B offers a marginal difference (and I’m sure it couldn’t be independent of riding conditions and rider preferences), it’s still a marginal difference.  Whereas the actual equipment standard is not marginal.  You can’t fit a 700C or 26” tire on a 650B, real simple.  It’s pass/fail, go/no go. Everything else could be splitting hairs, the princess and the pea…. until the wrench hits the bolt.

Mark V,

I did not know that about IRD freewheels…I had often heard good things about them (perhaps because they are some of the few actually available?).  Well, that’s a bummer.

What in particular goes wrong with them?  And why do even singlespeed freewheels and other brands of multispeed freewheels just suck these days…unless you’re willing to spend a fortune on White freewheels?

@Ghost Rider

The IRD freewheels get crunchy and then don’t spin, in short periods of time, in an unacceptable (IMO) proportion of units.  But there is nothing else available for those sizes of freewheel.  I feel like bashing my head into a wall every time I have to order an IRD freewheel, because I just feel that no one is going to be happy in the long run.  I would rather turn a customer to ebay to search out an old Sachs or Shimano freewheel.

As for singlespeed freewheels, I usually have good luck with Shimano BMX freewheels, and slightly less luck with ACS.  At $22 each, I can live with that because it’s relatively cheap and replacements are readily available. 

For multispeed freewheels, no one who made good ones does so now.  The companies are gone, purchased by bigger conglomerates, and/or the tooling is just long gone.  I like cassette hubs, but I could have lived with freewheels so long as quality replacements were available.  Now, I try not to sell freewheel-type rear wheels. 

Thanks for the insights, Mark.  Like I said before, it’s a bummer that quality can’t be built into these new freewheels…especially when they’re really the only ones available in those configurations.

Good thing I’ve stockpiled old freewheels using Ebay—and good thing they’re plentiful on there.  I probably have enough Regina and Suntour freewheels to last me two lifetimes now!

650b does have its points. It’s the ideal wheel size for someone under 6’ who wants a fat tire under fenders without a lot (or hopefully any) toe overlap. That’s a lot of folks. And while you can get pretty close with 26” wheels, it’s just plain clueless to say that given today’s increasing market for utility cycling that somehow 650b needs to go away.

If the bike industry wants to get anywhere, it’ll listen to folks who focus on what works and not on what’s fashionable. Cause my Kogswell running 42mm Gran Bois Hetre (Panaracer) 650b tires is faster than my XO2 with 26” tires, rides more smoothly, and still carries enough to be my commute bike. (And the XO is no slouch in any of those depts to start with.)

Sure there’s an element of style in the whole Riv thing, but the real world rolling resistance tests done by the Bicycle Quarterly folks speak for themselves.

You could try to point to competing research by the business as usual folks, but of course it doesn’t exist. To paraphrase what used to be said about Ma Bell. Trek et al don’t care. They don’t have to :-)

Think I’m wrong? Ever ridden a Trek Portland? Damm does that bike suck. (Those fenders? Portland? Right.) When the mainstream bike industry starts making “utility” bikes that aren’t dumpy mountain bikes wearing slicks or racing bikes wearing marginally wider tires then maybe efforts like the 650b one might become unnecessary.

Till that shining moment arrives, I’ll keep paying attention to all those “crazy” people with their odd obsession on “measuring performance” and “engineering”. (Why would anyone think that something like that would help make a bike fun to ride? Nuts I tell you, nuts :-)

@Bakfiets

True, Jan of Vintage Bicycle Quarterly does some really awesome stuff, but I wouldn’t sign off on all of his conclusions.  You cannot say that BQ doesn’t not have a distinct vintage bias.  I’ll point out something of the current issue.  The issue has this fantastic history of bicycle brakes, demonstrating that there are few entirely original bicycle ideas left to be invented.  But then he dismisses current mechanical disc brakes in one sentence. “...less powerful than good cantilever or centrepull brakes.”  Having once hated disc brakes myself, I now will state with great confidence that mechanical disc brakes have their faults, but lack of power isn’t one of them.  I would love to participate in measuring that performance.

But I agree with you that a lot of the bigger bike manufacturers are missing the mark with their utility and commuter bikes, though I understand why they do it.  Part of it is risk management, part of it is design-by-committee.

Given the current economic climate, I don’t think you’ll see any significant movement on the 650B front this year.

The market was crying for a larger wheel standard off road.  They got it in the 29er.  And it’s actually a great thing for tire manufacturers as there is an overlap in products between xcross/touring (700C) products and MTB products.

If 650B was to take off, it would probably be where there is already a large existing 650B user base.  As is, there is no “need” for 650B as 29er/700c and 26 inches has it pretty much covered in terms of the range of users it can serve.  True, with 650B you can squeeze a slightly larger tire in for a petite rider.  But they’re doing fine on 26 inches.

The “tweener” (650B) size is probably a bit much for the market.

I have issues with new ‘standards’.  Whether 29” mountain bikes or 650 road bikes, they don’t make sense for a variety of reasons, and we’d be better off sticking with the tried and true. 

Supposedly, the 29” mountain bikes are better for riding off road than the mountain bike that typically has 26” wheels because the beach cruisers that were originally converted back in the 1970’s to be the first mountain bikes came with them. So, it was a standard that was an accident and was never changed. So some marketing genius figured 30 years was a good period of time to wait and change the standard: for what benefit? Oh, the bike companies can sell a new line of bikes for bike shops to carry (in inventory!...remember, the bike makers make money off the interest that the shops pay on inventory!...just like car makers to dealers.)

While I don’t know all the advantages of this larger wheel diameter, I do know the disadvantages associated with this larger, and more importantly, different wheel diameter. The larger diameter wheel will negatively impact your ride, our environment, and the economic well being of bike shop owners.

First, 29ers degrade your ride. Not the individual “ride and feel” associated with a bike, but rather your riding experience. 29ers make it more difficult for a large cycling group to benefit from common components. Imagine being out in the wilderness riding your bike with some friends, and a few of you have flats. Imagine you’re the only one with a different wheel diameter. You’ve lost any potential ‘economies of scale’ by selecting a non-standard tube, tire, and wheel, as everyone in your mtnbike party will have extra tubes and such, but nothing to fit your goofy bike. So, 29ers add complexity to your ride and decrease the potential benefits of shared/common components associated with a group.

Additionally, 29ers are horrible for the environment. Sound a bit extreme? It’s not. When Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, and pals decided to use what was available, not only was this the best decision for the need to share common parts on the “Repack Downhill”, but it was also the best thing for the environment, at that time and now. Gary and Joe were recycling old bikes and making them more relevant to their specific needs. Simple modifications allowed them to do amazing things back then. To re-create a new wheel/tire diameter would only make things more complicated (less mechanical quality) and reduce the amount of material that was being reused. By changing standards we’ve only increased the level of complexity and waste associated with the bike industry. If you want to go simple and green: stay with a 26” wheel.

Bike shops are going to financially hurt from the added complexity of another wheel diameter and product type. Nowadays, with multiple tire, wheel, and tube diameters, we’ve ensured that bike companies have to make and carry a greater level of inventory of stock, at least twice as much, but more than likely it has some exponential effects. These effects would be seen in the multitude of different bikes available in not just pure 26” or 29” wheel sets, but also combinations of wheel diameters like 29/26. Sound crazy? It is, especially now that China has to make more bikes, tires and tubes. As magazines advertise and market these new products, how many perfectly good 26” bikes will end up in the landfill because of the limited benefit associated with riding a wheel that is 3” taller than the previous standard. And ultimately, bike shops will bear the cost of maintaining increased inventory of parts and bike products associated with the bike manufactures’ decision to complicate the bicycle market.

Again, this has negative economic, environmental and ride qualities for all cyclists. Protest the 29er (and 650)!

I think we need [Guitar Ted](http://g-tedproductions.blogspot.com/)—my opinion on 29ers is limited to why don’t they just call them 700? And the running joke, that no, they’re bigger.

Sigh. I luv ya Mark, but on 650B you do not appear to be clued-in quite yet.

>“On 650B tire manufacturers, the first three you mentioned are all actually made by the same company (National aka Panaracer) and I believe that 1 or 2 of the others is also National. And if you double check the rim manufacturers, I think you’ll find a similar situation.”

Even if there is some duplication, we’re talking more 650B tire and rim makers than you were apparently aware of. And there are more coming onboard each year. It’s slow, but steady.

>But I’m not going to be wrong about 650B mtb bikes. We need an in-between size for 26” and 29er? Whatever.

Guess you haven’t been listening to those who’ve actually tried 650B off-road… a lot of ppl seem to really like it, they feel that it combines the advantages of 29ers ability to roll over obstacles/maintain momentum with the 26"ers better-handling in technical situations, lighter weight, and of course the ability to design bikes for non-tall riders that still have a good amount of suspension travel.

It’s a ‘best of both worlds’ thing, and it has some excited. =]

On a side note, rumor has it that 650B was originally intended to be THE tire size on early mountain bikes (i.e the whole Breezer-Ritchey-Fisher gang). However, due to availability issues (some country bought up all the 650B equipment for their army’s bikes), they were forced to go with 26” instead.

Interesting how history works. ;)

For myself, I don’t think 650B will take over, but it has enough advantages that it’s probably here to stay.

And Mark, I don’t think you need to fear that the newbies will ‘accidentally’ purchase a 650B bike, seriously, those who buy 650B generally know what it is and what the implications are.

What I’d really like to see is more 650B on the *road*. It’s nice to be able to fit fatter tires and fenders on serious road bikes, plus the smaller wheels help eliminate TCO (toe-clip overlap) and let the designers make bikes for smaller riders without the geometry/fit compromises that 700C inherently imposes on small frames.

650B… it’s good for you. ;)

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