32 inch wheels thread

[neptronix]

Vertical acceleration is important. Your cartilage and muscles have a lot of motion to soak up already.

With 32" wheels, all mountain bike and gravel reviews generally remark on faster speed in that application.
People have been pleasantly surprised with many of the previous suspensionless examples.
I imagine this translates well to areas with crappy pavement.

I like the idea of using a larger diameter wheel to reduce the system complexity of the bicycle.

The worse the surface, the more a big wheel helps. In my crappy roaded area, i gained 1-2 mph on my upright bike by going from a 26" to 29".

Recumbents don't have to think about this too much, they have a big gain from aerodynamics, which easily overcomes the downside of wheel size. The larger inertia of a large wheel makes their achilles heel when climbing worse, so they tend to trade off pedal-ability for achieving absolute comfort. But with a motor, you don't need to make this tradeoff

I have yet to ride a big wheel recumbent but i'm betting they are quicker on the flats.

 

[n00b]

If you ride over a 3” rock, the wheels will have to move up 3” ,… no matter if they are 26”, 29” or 48” !
But i try to avoid 3” rocks , and pot holes, ……so i will save the $5+ k another new bike would cost, and stay with my lighter,, FS 26”. ….and leave the hardtail 29” for you.

Yeah, I'm not paying $5k for a 29er. 1st I got one someone had thrown out.
I fixed it up and e-biked it.
Runs great.
The rear derailleur had messed up and gotten into the spokes and a lot of that was busted back there.
So I fixed all that and the chain and put a 9C clone rear hub motor on it.
It's noticeably smoother than an actual 26" Mountain Bike.
I noticed that when I had to take the same path twice in 1 day.
Diameter matters, brah. I try to avoid 3' rocks and need to do some spoke work on the one I was just referencing tomorrow.

 

[ZeroEm]

Vertical acceleration is important. Your cartilage and muscles have a lot of motion to soak up already.

With 32" wheels, all mountain bike and gravel reviews generally remark on faster speed in that application.
People have been pleasantly surprised with many of the previous suspensionless examples.
I imagine this translates well to areas with crappy pavement.

I like the idea of using a larger diameter wheel to reduce the system complexity of the bicycle.

The worse the surface, the more a big wheel helps. In my crappy roaded area, i gained 1-2 mph on my upright bike by going from a 26" to 29".

Recumbents don't have to think about this too much, they have a big gain from aerodynamics, which easily overcomes the downside of wheel size. The larger inertia of a large wheel makes their achilles heel when climbing worse, so they tend to trade off pedal-ability for achieving absolute comfort. But with a motor, you don't need to make this tradeoff

I have yet to ride a big wheel recumbent but i'm betting they are quicker on the flats.

That's all I think about is wheel size. Pot holes look like the Grand Canyon. The rear wheel, worry about folding it over, if the fronts are to big then you can not turn sharp. Small wheels keeps you out of the air but makes the ride rough. A lot of trade offs.

 

[neptronix]

Best you can do is put the tallest tire you can buy on it honestly.

Going from 20 x 2.2 to 20 x 2.8 on my maxarya helped massively. Air is suspension.

 

[ZeroEm]

Sooner or later going to 24" fronts. Could try a 32" in the rear if it does not fold in half in a high speed turn.

 

[neptronix]

I think it would be very difficult to find 32" rims, rim strips, or spokes long enough to lace a wheel up.
Tires? i believe there's at least 2 for sale on the open market.
Putting wheels that big on a bike not designed for it could make it tippy. You probably don't want that.

 

[2old]

Try unicycle.com (or equivalent) for 32" rims; plenty of places custom-cut spokes (try danscomp).

 

[dgc]

I am too old, have enough trouble getting my leg over ! , a 29er let alone a 32er, would need leg extensions, perhaps a mullet 32"f 29"r combo, do like my mullet bikes.

 

[99t4]

Air is suspension.

Yep. Overlooked by many.

 

[ZeroEm]

What this is not a fad we are going to do! Figured next year all of us will have 32's. I'm going for full suspension trike with 24" wheels first, if I live enough will try the 32". maybe plenty in stock by then.

 

[Hillhater]

What this is not a fad we are going to do! Figured next year all of us will have 32's.

Eventually we probably will have too..
Manufacturers /retailers will have made 32” the “norm” with 26” and 29” getting harder to find.
….Unless they have moved on to 36” or 1.0 meter , or something else again to find another way of relocating cash from our pocket to theirs !

 

[Papa]

Beginning to read like bunch of horny females... at a Chippendale's stripper club.

 

[dgc]

Yep, sounds like it will be, my one is bigger than yours soon, but the same as with cars, they keep getting bigger, so nothing new perhaps.

 

[2old]

To me, they make more sense in this forum than MTB since we have the luxury of adding power, not relying solely on our legs.

 

[ZeroEm]

Beginning to read like bunch of horny females... at a Chippendale's stripper club.

Well Papa the reality of me running a 32" is low, have a 26" rear wheel and never even went to a 2" tire yet. The problem is it has worked so well for me. What is that saying if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

[dgc]

ZeroEm, I ride two bikes mostly, one is a 29er and the other a 27.5"f / 26"r mullet, a case of normally ride one and charge the other. The mullet I find better around the tight forest track near me and the 29er down tracks, tow paths, gravel tracks etc. As before, I am old, have enough trouble getting my leg over the 29er, to start again with frames etc etc, no, sooner buy something like a Caterham 7 170 sports car.

 

[Logic11]

I Rode The Largest Mountain Bike In The World (36” Wheels!)

Quite a lot of talk about it rolling over obstacles with ease.

 

[aroundqube]

SE Bikes has announced the production of the 32 in Colossal Ripper Colossal Ripper 32" . Still trying to track down the 32 x 2.4 SE Bozark tires , here is what I have found so far JBI - Product Details . Guessing that it is like the smaller SE Bozark tires.

 

[neptronix]

Nice. It has 135mm dropouts so the prospect of adding a hub shouldn't be a huge deal


Too bad the frame isn't chromoly.
Price is reasonable. Metal rims are going to be heavy, but that's not a huge deal or an ebike.
If that fork isn't a 1 inch diameter, it could be converted into a 32" rear with a 29" front suspension and probably have killer comfort aside from looking silly.

Would rather buy an inexpensive front suspension 32" MTB than convert this to into one though

 

[qwerkus]

Best you can do is put the tallest tire you can buy on it honestly.

Going from 20 x 2.2 to 20 x 2.8 on my maxarya helped massively. Air is suspension.

True, but it lacks dampening. This basically means that your balloon tire suspension works as a spring and is frequency-specific: let s imaging a road full or irregular potholes. Now you roll a wheel at a specific speed over that road; each time you hit a pothole, you cause deformation into the tire that will bounce back at a fixed rate depending on tires and air pressure. Let s call the series of all potholes the deformation frequency: over the same road, this frequency increases with wheel speed. As a thumb rule, your air filled tires will effectively suck up deformations as long as the overall frequency allows for sufficient back bouncing. Past this, it will translate into a very harsh ride, and around the resonance frequency, it will even feel worse than the road actually is.

That's why wide tires make up an effective suspension only at low speed, which - depending on volume, pressure and tire - is somewhere below 25km/h. The higher the speed, the more important becomes the need for a true suspension, which combines a spring and a dampener, like a suspension fork or a tail shock. My 2 cents: small diameter wheel with dedicated suspension are better on ebikes than large wheels without suspension. Best would probably be large wheels with suspension, at the cost of more expensive frames and a heavier system.

 

[neptronix]

Yeah i'm aware that air in the tire is much inferior to suspension. But it's much better than none. And lowish PSI tires are great at handling smaller road imperfections in my experience, than a nice air suspension. And vice versa, you shouldn't expect air tires to handle potholes, curbs, etc very well. Ideally you have both.

 

[neptronix]

I keep seeing new 32" MTB concepts lately. The most reasonable looking of them all is a maxxis faction concept, which appears to be a medium to large sized frame.



If we compare to a 29er of similar geometry, you notice that we have 2x the rear travel, and quite a bit more front travel.



If you look at the geometry.. you'll see that since these bike makers refuse to elongate the wheelbase, the middle of the bike gets compressed and funny things start happening. It's not a very good choice. This tells us that the medium sized 32" full suspension bike is a major problem.

Dirtysixer on the other hand would make the bike proportionally correct, and refuse to sell anything under an extra large as their solution. The resulting bike is not geometrically challenged in any way since things are getting scaled up.

( as a 6ft tall person, i'd prefer this )



I read this article recently that really got technical into things with 32" MTB design. It's n excellent quality article.
What’s Behind 32” MTB Wheels? – Revolution or Market Bubble?
It ends on a skeptical note.

Personally i think the idea from a MTB perspective is a bit of a stretch. The reason is the expectation for full suspension. I think gravel and road bikes stand to benefit more. And the less tall tires = less insanity needed with geometry.

It looks like in roadie/gravel world there's some approval of 32 inch wheels with the caveat that if they find it advantages larger riders over smaller ones, it might get banned.
Why the UCI allowing 32in wheels in XCO World Cup racing is so significant | BikeRadar

That's a big deal because the UCI dictates a lot about what you can or cannot do with racing bikes.

I think the most exciting application of these is on road/gravel. Yet here we are with no road tires or rims available still. It's also easier to build a large size frame if you have something like a 42c wheel size limitation. I'm hoping that the UCI approval bears some fruit then. This could make for an awesome street ebike.

750d wheels? seem to be dead in the water, no mention of them on google news since ~Jan 2025. It's a shame because they are more practical and medium sized bikes with them is a lot more feasible. In fact they could fit in a 29" fat bike design makes it an easy jump up.

But i'm no bike designer, i just play one on tv ( currently )

 

[Hillhater]

That's why wide tires make up an effective suspension only at low speed, which - depending on volume, pressure and tire - is somewhere below 25km/h. The higher the speed, the more important becomes the need for a true suspension, which combines a spring and a dampener, like a suspension fork or a tail shock.

down here, (Oz) we have lots of dirt trails ( loose sand & gravel) that develop “corrigations” like small waves 2-5” deep and varing lenth, and full width of the track. It is not practical to ride these tracks without full suspension.

My 2 cents: small diameter wheel with dedicated suspension are better on ebikes than large wheels without suspension. Best would probably be large wheels with suspension, at the cost of more expensive frames and a heavier system.

Sounds much like my comment on page one of this thread !

 

[qwerkus]

If you look at the geometry.. you'll see that since these bike makers refuse to elongate the wheelbase, the middle of the bike gets compressed and funny things start happening. It's not a very good choice. This tells us that the medium sized 32" full suspension bike is a major problem.

Transportation!

 

[ZeroEm]

Wonder if we will all to go locked geared hubs for the bigger wheels? Cattrike suspension.