Originally Posted by
FBinNY
Just what we need, another wheel size for the industry to support with spares for X number of years. OTOH, it could be a short term fad that will blow over soon enough, leaving the lucky owners hunting for spares a few years from now.
Wheel size is a matter of balancing tradeoffs. Over a century of experience has lead to the clear winners being somewhere between 26" and 700c. (26-29" overall diameter). Going larger improves handling on rough pavements, but increases weight, lowers (somewhat) wheel strength and rigidity, and most important can create clearance and geometry issues on all but the largest frames.
Other than being different for the sake of being different, it just doesn't make any sense to design out of the box creating all manor of new "standards" whenever marketing simply wants something to talk about.
Uggh...another tire spec...two more Tylenol please!
Here in the bay area, someone is importing bikes from China as-is - trying to start their own "business". Unfortunately, they are not very "standards" savy as they brought in a bunch of:
22 x 1 3/8
24 x 1 3/8 or 1 1/4
26 x 1 3/8 (Which is not too bad - tires and tubes are still available...)
...for a year or so before they realized they were putting their customers in a bind.
And that's besides the fact the rims and spokes themselves were crappy to begin with requiring a rebuild.
=8-(