Originally Posted by
prj71
29 also rolls over imperfections in the trail vs. falling into the ruts like a 26" tired would do.
Picture the difference between a full size truck and a Honda Civic going over the same pothole...The pothole would hardly be felt in the truck, where as it'd probably feel like it was swallowing up your Civic because of the difference in wheel sizes.
That's the theory I know but it's not quite Civic vs Truck. Here is a superposition of a 26" MTB frame design and a long-low-slack 29er, aligned at the top of the front tyre:
As you can see it's about a quarter of the circumference before the two tyre outlines start to diverge noticeably. It's hard to see how this can make much difference except on very large ruts.