How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
Andre Jute

This article is illustrated at http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/archives/1715

The 29er is a modern incarnation of the beach cruiser of the 1950s. By
definition it has wide, low pressure tyres, of the type called
"balloons" in more spacious times.

Today your pure 29er is an MTB with a fork and a rear triangle big
enough to take a balloon tyre of at least 57.5mm wide on a 622 rim.
(The math: 29in is 737mm. (737-622)/2 = 57.5). In practice this
usually means that a 29er should take a 60x622 Big Apple with a
circumference of 745mm, and fork axle to crown distance is generally
somewhere around 420-440mm to allow fitting a mudguard as well. Some
forks are even taller to compensate for replacing long-travel
suspended forks. A solid fork, especially one made of chromium
molybdenum steel, chromoly in the vernacular, is feasible because the
fat low pressure tyre is for practical purposes as good as mechanical
suspension struts.

Conventional tyre/rim wisdom is that a tyre 1.5 to 2.5 times the inner
width of the rim, across the retainer beads, may be fitted. Thus a
60mm tyre requires a rim with a minimum inner width of 24mm and
maximum of 40mm. The wider the rim, the less air pressure needs to be
put into the tyre, and the more successfully it works as suspension.
I've had 60x622 Big Apple tyres on rims of 15 and 17 and 25mm internal
width. The only ones that work as the tyres are intended to is the
25mm internal width rim (Exal XL25, nominal external width 31mm).
Other knowledgeable cyclists prefer an even wider rim to permit even
lower pressures in the iconic Big Apples.

Let's be clear. A bicycle with tyres of less than 57.5mm nominal width
is not a 29er. A bicycle with rims so narrow that any tyres, including
nominal balloons, have to be pumped up to high pressures to stay on
the rim and not to be dangerous at speed, is not a balloon bike, and
therefore not a 29er.

Enter the wishful thinkers from the marketing departments of bike
manufacturers everywhere. A genuine twenty-niner is an expensive thing
to build, requiring a much wider fork and rear triangle than normal
even on big touring MTBs, and taller too. And frame, fork and
components must all be first class, because substantial rotating
weight and thus forces are involved. Even the ultra-light extra-cost
folding version of the Big Apple 60x622 weighs into same class as the
superb but hefty Marathon Plus in the 37/38mm size, generally thought
of as the furthest extent of tyre weight serious cyclists (year round
commuters and tourers) should consider.

But the marketers wanted the trendy 29er appellation without spending
the money on putting in the special frame and the good components, and
thereby pricing their bikes out of competition. First they persuaded
ERTTRO to permit balloon tyres to be fitted to ever narrower rims,
which of course meant that the balloons had to be over-inflated and
thus were no longer balloons, defeating the purpose of making a 29er.
Never mind, they didn't really want a 29er, they just wanted to call
it a 29er, to catch a few suckers with money in their pockets but
without the brains to ask what a 29er actually is, and does.

Now, admittedly, none of this matters to me. I can afford to order a
custom bike, designed from the ground up around balloon tyres, built
to match my every desire by Germans with components tested to
destruction not once, not twice, but three times (by the German
government, by the German bicycle manufacturers' trade body, by the
obsessives building my bike). I did order such a bike. I'm deliriously
happy with it. BMW money? So what? I don't keep a car, haven't for
twenty years. I go everywhere on my pushbike, put more miles on it
every year than I ever did on a car. In the opinion of my physicians,
I'm alive because of all that cycling. Incidentally, even without the
cushy ride of the low pressure balloons on my bike measured on my bum,
so to speak, I'd gleefully pay for the entire setup because it has
also removed microvibrations from my hands and wrists. (This may be
difficult for some to understand, but to me it is very, very
important. You see, a writer is essentially a manual worker, in that
he operates a keyboard for twelve or fourteen hours a day, and if his
hobby or exercise already causes his hands and wrists to hurt or
tingle or vibrate, work can become a chore for years on end.)

But someone else who buys a socalled "29er" off the shelf for still
substantial money gets ripped when he has to pressure the tyres to be
as hard as rocks because the manufacturer fitted rims too narrow for
the tyres. The poor punter gets the "29er" name and the appearance of
big tyres, but he doesn't get the 29er performance he was promised and
paid for because, to compensate for the manufacturer skimping on rim
width, he has to inflate the tyres to a level where their great
advantage is lost. He has in fact bought a more expensive touring bike
with high pressure tyres, and one which won't work as efficiently or
economically or pleasingly as the real thing. It's a mishmash that's
neither fish nor fowl, and tastes foul.

A by-effect of these cheapskate manufacturing policies irritates. I
bought an electric conversion kit to try the pedelec craze. I want to
build it into a rim like the ones already on my bike, which are Exal
XL25. This is a high quality rim designed (by my custom bike makers)
specifically for use with Big Apple 60mm balloons, my fave tyre, and
made by a fine Belgian firm of rim specialists. Except that dealers
don't stock it any more. Manufacturers have been so successful in the
penny-pinching venture of trimming the rim width of socalled "29er"
rims that most of the rims now offered as so-called "29ers" are 19 or
20 or at most 21mm wide across the beads, absolutely worthless for the
self-described purpose of a "balloon" bike with a 60mm wide tyre. In
short, "29er" has been reduced — from a bike that worked distinctively
differently — to a meaningless, empty marketing nomenclature.

Sure, there's a solution. There always is, if you look hard enough.
Unicycle 29er rims are still the real thing, wider across the beads in
fact than my Exals, and strong with it, because on a unicycle only one
wheel must support the mass and resolve all the stresses and strains
that on a bicycle are shared between two wheels.

But I wouldn't have had to apply lateral thinking to acquiring common
parts if bike manufacturers weren't so greedy and their marketing
departments staffed with such liars. Shame on them.

Copyright 2011 Andre Jute

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

http://herculesmuseum.wordpress.com/...ercules-gents/

Dwelt a minor twenty niner, And his darling Clementine.
Oh my darling, oh my darling, Oh my darling, Clementine!

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

Wow. Rarely have I seen something so simple, and so provenly-useful,
over-thought to such a great extent. And to what purpose?

29ers work. Stock, off-the-shelf 29ers are holding up as well as, and
maybe even better than, the similar 26-inch mountain bikes we sell.

That axe must be pretty darned dull to have brought on all this. Or, as
someone in rbr is fond of saying, "Dude, she must have really hurt you."

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:
Wow. Rarely have I seen something so simple, and so provenly-useful,
over-thought to such a great extent. And to what purpose?

29ers work. Stock, off-the-shelf 29ers are holding up as well as, and
maybe even better than, the similar 26-inch mountain bikes we sell.

That axe must be pretty darned dull to have brought on all this. Or, as
someone in rbr is fond of saying, "Dude, she must have really hurt you."


You read the whole thing? He lost me midway through the
second paragraph.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

On Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:09:48 -0700 (PDT), Andre Jute
wrote:
How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
Andre Jute
This article is illustrated at http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/archives/1715

I'll call your 29 inches and raise you another 7 inches:
http://twentynineinches.com/2007/02/14/36-inch-wheels-the-next-big-thing/
http://bmxmuseum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=163676
http://www.cokercycles.com/monster-crusier
Anything worth doing, is also worth over-doing.

Incidentally, methinks it's marketeer, not marketer:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marketeer

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

On 7/30/2011 12:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:09:48 -0700 (PDT), Andre Jute
wrote:
How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
Andre Jute
This article is illustrated at http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/archives/1715

I'll call your 29 inches and raise you another 7 inches:
http://twentynineinches.com/2007/02/14/36-inch-wheels-the-next-big-thing/
http://bmxmuseum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=163676
http://www.cokercycles.com/monster-crusier
Anything worth doing, is also worth over-doing.

As long as you put on the Mountain Tamer Quad and Suntour brings back
the 38 tooth rear cog, the 36" wheel is fine.

http://abundantadventures.com/mt_plus.html. You can have five chain rings.

Add a ten sprocket rear cassette, a Schlumpf bottom bracket, and SRAM
dual drive, and you can have 300 speeds.

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

Andre Jute wrote:

Let's be clear. A bicycle with tyres of less than 57.5mm nominal width
is not a 29er. A bicycle with rims so narrow that any tyres, including
nominal balloons, have to be pumped up to high pressures to stay on
the rim and not to be dangerous at speed, is not a balloon bike, and
therefore not a 29er.

A corollary of your reasoning here would be that the same principles
define 26" MTBs. Since by 1990 most high-end MTBs sported narrow rims
that wouldn't pass muster according to your standards, they aren't
MTBs by your reasoning. But they are.

In my book, any bike whose frame will fit 700x50 (actual) tires or
larger without the tires rubbing hard parts when ridden is a 29er.
Doesn't matter what rims are on it.

Chalo

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

SMS wrote:

As long as you put on the Mountain Tamer Quad and Suntour brings back
the 38 tooth rear cog, the 36" wheel is fine.

28/28 was fare for plenty a mountain biker in the early days of that
sport. 22-34 on a 36" wheel is lower. 94/58 cranks allow 20t low,
and combined with the new 12-36 cassettes offer lower ratios yet.

Chalo

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

On Jul 30, 5:59*am, "Mike Jacoubowsky"
wrote:
Wow. Rarely have I seen something so simple, and so provenly-useful,
over-thought to such a great extent. And to what purpose?

Sorry if you have a short attention span. Generally I don't write for
bike dealers.

29ers work. Stock, off-the-shelf 29ers are holding up as well as, and
maybe even better than, the similar 26-inch mountain bikes we sell.

What 29-ers that you sell? Which, if any, of those that you sell have
tyres 57.5mm wide or wider. If the tyres on these so-called "29-ers"
that you sell aren't 57.5mm wide or wider, they aren't 29-ers and
you're misrepresenting your trade goods.

That axe must be pretty darned dull to have brought on all this. Or, as
someone in rbr is fond of saying, "Dude, she must have really hurt you."

Nope. I just got ****ed off at the misrepresention of clowns calling a
rim 21mm a "29-er rim". That's a lie in any language, wherever in the
world you are.

--Mike-- * * Chain Reaction Bicycleswww.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Yep, I can see why you didn't like my article. Tough tittie.

Andre Jute
Now where that number for the Trading Standards Office?

How marketers turned "29er" into empty verbiage
 

On Jul 30, 3:52*pm, AMuzi wrote:

You read the whole thing? He lost me midway through the
second paragraph.

--
Andrew Muzi
* www.yellowjersey.org/
* Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Put you mind in gear before you open your mouth, Andrew. What sort of
a bike store operator would you be if I needed to explain to you that
a "29er is an MTB with a fork and a rear triangle big enough to take a
balloon tyre of at least 57.5mm wide on a 622 rim." You'd look pretty
stupid if you didn't know even that much.

I was clearly not writing for you. Duh!

Though some doubt has been thrown on my assumption that bikestore
owners can do simple math by Mike Jacoubowsky's claim that those bikes
he sells to gullibles are "29-ers".

Andre Jute
I always said it was a mistake to take math off the compulsory syllabus