650b wheels on a 29er?
 

NOT REAL HAPPY WITH 29 WHEELS. WOULD 650b WHEELS FIT? WILL THIS WORK? MAYBE MORE TROUBLE THAN IT IS WORTH.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Discs front and rear? Then yeah, they'll fit.

Your steering geometry and bottom bracket height would change.

What's wrong with 29" wheels that 27.5" wheels would fix? Too many tire choices? :)

There are two issues about a different(smaller) wheelset on a bike than OEM; the first, and most important, is BRAKING. If you have disc brakes front and rear, there is no real problem, just mount the "old" disc rotors on the "new" hubs. The second issue is bottom bracket height -- but in the scenario you describe, you will only lose 3/4".

I rolled for 6 months with 26" wheels on a 29er frame; aside from OCCASIONAL pedal strike in some areas I rode, I had no issues...until the frame cracked, totally unrelated to the wheel size question.

Don't like 29er? Trade for someone with a 26" bike, there are lots of people with 26" MTBs looking for 29ers.

Personally I think the 650B MTB fad is stupid. Just what we need, another tire size that is not very much different than 26"

26" = 559mm
650B = 584mm
29er/700c = 622mm

I think its just a revival of the 27 inch wheels from the 70s/80s. I actually have a 27 inch wheeled roadie and I REALLY like the feel of it. I also have 29 and 26 inch wheeled bikes as a comparison and for comfort I think 650B is the winner.

You may indeed like the feel of this bike but I can assure you it's not the 27" wheels that are providing it.

Guess what? Your "27 inch" wheel is 630mm, which is actually LARGER than the "29er" size. Although the 27" tire combo might be smaller than a fat 29er MTB tire, the wheel itself is very slightly larger.

Wheel size has NOTHING to do with comfort, unless you go to extremes on the small side (a good example is riding a skateboard or roller blades over a sewer grate.)

Lowering the BB can be problematic.

As a general rule, changing wheel sizes on any bike is fraught with problems. Among them are brake reach, frame clearance, bottom bracket height/pedal clearance and geometry changes. If you want a bike with specific size wheels buy one originally designed for them.

The only exception is modernizing a 27" road bike with 700c wheels. This usually works and the brake reach issue can be handled either at no cost or relatively inexpensively.

The ONLY change to steering geo is 'trail', the actual measured distance between the contact patch and the point in front of it in line with the fork; and that only changes because the hub is 3/4" closer to the ground, so the change is marginal. Head angle stays the same.

Lots of folks out here passing out vague advice.... Lester, at least you focused on the OP.

The question is vague, so answers have limited value. jmart2, what are you not happy about with your wheels?

And yes, it's usually more trouble than it's worth.

put some 622-35 slick-ish tires on instead of the 50 + wide ones.. EZ Peazy..

This. You can save a lot of weight where it matters most ditching big tyres.

I will leave the wheels as they are.

I was looking at all kinds of options to slacken the head angle and lower the bottom bracket on my Santa Cruz Nomad recently such as offset bushings and adjustable headsets. The problem was that SC uses a weird bushing size and the headset is 1 1/8". Only one company was making an adjustable headset and that only gives you 1 deg change.

Then I realised all I had to do was buy a 24" rim and some spokes and voila, I had everything I was looking for and it only cost about £40.

I question the idea that manufacturers have optimised wheel size for the frame. They built the frames to fit the 'average' rider for riding the 'average' trails. If the bike isn't quite right for you then I don't see anything wrong with playing around with the wheel size to get it right for you.

I think the difference is that you clearly knew what you were doing, and most importantly, WHY you wanted to do it. When people want to put smaller wheels on a road bike to, say, gain standover clearance and have no idea of the implications then it's a problem.