29ers

29er == 700c. Sure, the tires are fatter, but the rim diameter is interchangeable.

Don’t tell anyone, but my rear wheel on my Nexus is actually a 29er rim! :)

No, no, I’m pretty sure that the ertro is slightly bigger and 29r have the whole Web 2.0 “r” thing going for them — ya know, twittr, flickr.

Trust Sheldon!:

29er == 700c

622mm rim diameter.

I’m snarking the whole 29er thing as being, well, something to snark. There’s an industry inside joke that says, “well, aren’t they “bigger?” Instead of calling them 700c or maybe they should’ve been 29X because they’re extremer.

a) the ertro is exactly the same on 29ers.

b) it makes sense that they wanted to differentiate them from 700c wheels. Yeah it’s lame that mountainbikers would probably have shied away from a road bike standard, but the fact that they’re much higher volume and therefore a bigger overall diameter than road bikes makes the name differentiation sensible.

i’ve kinda been following the 29er thing since before Gary Fisher made it mainstream, just because i’m a tech weenie. “29er” name is largely marketing…but it works.

but once upon a time i had just started at this bike shop, and there was a customer who insisted that 29er was bigger than 700c. i argued for a while before i decided it was keeping me from my tasks and the guy was an idiot.

that said, there is such a thing as 28”. a lot of european manufacturers designate 700C as “28”, but there is also a “true 28”. also known as “700B”, it has a bead seat diameter of 635mm, compared to “700C”/622mm or “27”/630mm.

personally, i way more for 29er than i am 650B or 700B. Pashley makes a reproduction bike with 700B wheels, and there are 2 such bikes sitting a the bike shop now, plus 2 650B. i hate them.

diameter is same and tires are interchangable with varying results. the actual difference is in the width but that difference is getting smaller with the new 23mm 700 rims.

Like anything else in the bike indusrty - multiple standards come about as someone tries to get differentiation. the end result is that. even if it is a stupid idea (650b) that is not needed, others will follow suit.

and when 29 isn’t enough, there’s 36.