Throwback Thursday: The Wheel-Size Wars, 15 Years Ago

In 2010, when the above issue came out, the 27.5 inch wheel size was just starting to catch on. At that time, the 26-inch and 29-inch wheels were the standard choices of mountain bikers. Most mountain bikes that were being bought in those days had 26-inch wheels, but 29-inch wheels were growing in popularity. Meanwhile, the newer 27.5-inch wheels, also known as 650b wheels, were starting to grow in popularity, too.

We did an article in the above issue where we took three hardtail mountain bikes, all made by the same company (KHS), with all three wheel sizes to find out the advantages and disadvantages of all of them. Below, you can see the layout of the article that we did in that issue:

In our tests, each wheel size was better at some things than the other sizes. The 26-inch size was the fastest in the sprints. The 29-inch size was better in going down rocky chutes. We found we liked the 27.5-inch wheel size better in banked turns. In the end, we decided that it was best for individual riders to find out which wheel size they liked best for themselves. Lately, we’ve heard that some of the bike companies are working on coming out with bikes with 32-inch wheels. We don’t know if that will catch on or not, but we recently saw somewhere that some people are experimenting with bikes with 32-inch front wheels and 29-inch back wheels.

By the way, around 15 years ago, MBA staffer John Ker went down in the storage area to check out some of Motocross Action’s test bikes. John measured the size of the wheels of some of the motocross bikes. He found that the outside diameter of the motocross bikes’ front tires was 29 inches. The outside diameters of the motocross bikes’ back tires was 27.5 inches. Who knows what the best wheel sizes are for mountain bikers? One thing that seems to be true is that people never stop experimenting with those things.